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Cy Liskard was leaning on the counter with folded arms, and when the weighing was completed and the teller bent over his task of working out the sum, he drew a deep sigh as though in relief that his task had been completed.

Victor looked up at the sound.

“Kind of makes a boy glad to get it safe into the bank. In these days of hold-ups around Beacon it’s jumpy play toting a bunch of dust around. Say, that’s swell stuff. Good an’ red, like the stuff the boys collected on ‘Eighty Mile’ years back. I haven’t seen that colour anywhere around Beacon till you hit along with your bunch last fall. Are you registered?”

Cy’s gaze was withdrawn from the moving pen of the teller. “Not on your life.”

Burns raised his eyebrows.

“That’s taking a chance,” he demurred. “Aren’t you scared folks’ll jump in on you?”

The man made a sound like a laugh. But his face was unmoving.

“Not a little bit,” he said roughly. “I guess ther’ ain’t a guy in Beacon with the guts to get out to the creek I got staked. If he’d the guts he couldn’t make it. An’ if he made it he’d forgit wakin’ when the daylight come around. No, sir. I ain’t registered, an’ don’t figger to. I ain’t handin’ a map of my strike to any cursed official. I ain’t handin’ the story to a deaf mute. I got my patch, an’ I’ll keep it. I nigh sweated blood to locate it. Register an’ haf the world would get right on my back. I’ll take all the chances, an’ God help the son of a mule who gets within a mile of it. What’s the tally?”