Major James Guilford, the president of the Apache National, was in the
cage with the sweating paying tellers, and it was to him that Kent
presented his check when his turn came.

"What! You, too, Kent?" said the president, reproachfully. "I thought you
had more backbone."

Kent shook his head.

"Gaston has absorbed nine-tenths of the money I brought here; I'll absorb
the remaining tenth myself, if it's just the same to you, Major. Thank
you." And the hundred and twenty-seventh man pocketed his salvage from the
wreck and fought his way out through the jam at the doors. Two hours
farther along in the forenoon the Apache National suspended payment, and
the bank examiner was wired for.

For suddenness and thoroughgoing completeness the Gaston bubble-bursting
was a record-breaker. For a week and a day there was a frantic struggle
for enlargement, and by the expiration of a fortnight the life was pretty
well trampled out of the civic corpse and the stench began to arise.

Flight upon any terms then became the order of the day, and if the place
had been suddenly plague-smitten the panicky exodus could scarcely have
been more headlong. None the less, in any such disorderly up-anchoring
there are stragglers perforce: some left like stranded hulks by the ebbing
tide; others riding by mooring chains which may be neither slipped nor
capstaned. When all was over there were deserted streets and empty suburbs
in ruthless profusion; but there was also a hungry minority of the crews
of the stranded and anchored hulks left behind to live or die as they