"Yes, before. Last night. You was taller then, and hadn't cut your hair.
You cursed a good deal more than you do now. You drank a man's share
of whiskey, and you borrowed fifty dollars to get to Sacramento with. I
reckon you haven't got it about you now, eh?"

Clarence's brain reeled in utter confusion and hopeless terror.

Was he going crazy, or had these cruel men learned his story from
his faithless friends, and this was a part of the plot? He staggered
forward, but the men had risen and quickly encircled him, as if to
prevent his escape. In vague and helpless desperation he gasped--

"What place is this?"

"Folks call it Deadman's Gulch."

Deadman's Gulch! A flash of intelligence lit up the boy's blind
confusion. Deadman's Gulch! Could it have been Jim Hooker who had really
run away, and had taken his name? He turned half-imploringly to the
first speaker.

"Wasn't he older than me, and bigger? Didn't he have a smooth, round
face and little eyes? Didn't he talk hoarse? Didn't he--" He stopped
hopelessly.

"Yes; oh, he wasn't a bit like you," said the man musingly. "Ye see,
that's the h-ll of it! You're altogether TOO MANY and TOO VARIOUS fur
this camp."

"I don't know who's been here before, or what they have said," said