For a week, more people continued to pour into the camp, and then disappeared into the Yagul Mountains in the blink of an eye, and some people began to come out of the mountains one after another.
Everyone felt that something was wrong. What was wrong was that there were always some strange faces hiding in the places that had to be passed to and from the Eye of Death Basin. As long as someone came back, they would start killing people.
Old John was not the only one who felt something was wrong, many gold diggers felt something was wrong.
On the weekend of the second week, the very famous gold diggers in the entire camp gathered together and invited more old gold diggers to discuss everything that had happened recently.
Old John was also one of those old gold diggers with a little bit of fame. He was a well-known lone wolf in the East District, so he was naturally among those invited.
In fact, this meeting affected not only the hearts of the invitees, but also the entire gold prospector group. Even the gunfire in the Yagur Mountains stopped for the whole night.
Sitting in a small valley, twenty very famous gold diggers had already arrived at the scene. They were standing at the bottom of the valley. The entire valley was like a Colosseum, a huge natural funnel, and others were crowded in. on the hill.
After Old John tied the horse, he held the pocket on his thigh with one hand and walked slowly downwards. He didn't want others to find out that his injury was not fully healed. An injured lone wolf meant a greater risk.
He could only rely on the strength of his arms to move his broken leg, making it look like he was not seriously injured. This could effectively avoid some avoidable battles.
He found a stone and sat down. He subconsciously took out a wine flask from his body and took a sip. The strong liquor, like a blazing flame, dispelled the chill in his body and relieved some of the tension.
"John!"
Along with hearty laughter, someone called his name, and he turned back in response, with a smile on his face.
Outside the West, upper-class people despised the middle class and the proletariat, who in turn despised the lower class and the proletariat. The lower class continued to despise the proletariat, and the proletariat despised the provincials.
In the west, here, there are also many chains of contempt.
In the past, when the power of the Western Mining Association still ruled this land, the Western Mining Association was the organization that stood at the top of the contempt chain. Whether it was those giant mining groups or various speculators and gold diggers, they all The object of their contempt.
But with the demise of the West Mining Association, gold diggers began to gather towards Yagul Mountain, where a new chain of contempt was born.
Gold diggers despise everything, whether they are mining groups or major forces, they are all downstream of the gold diggers, because these people here must abide by the unwritten rules of the gold diggers, so they are at the top of the contempt chain.
But if there are any new links that have been added to the contempt chain recently, it must be the new forces and new gold diggers who gathered because of the discovery of gold mines in the Eye of Death Basin.
None of them have been baptized by the cooperation between the Western Mining Association and big capitalists. For old gold diggers like Old John who have been in the West for more than ten years, they cannot be called gold diggers at all. At best, they are speculators.
In the face of these speculators who call themselves gold diggers, Old John never shows disdain.
The people greeting him behind him obviously belonged to the original group. They were all in the same link.
The person who came was named Haimo. He originally had a brother, but his brother died in a duel, which was a sad thing. Highmore has become more threatening and aggressive since then, possibly due to the death of his brother.
He and John Sr. were friends, part of the same group of gold diggers who came to the West and made some minor names.
"I knew I would definitely see you..." He threw the wine bottle in his hand, and the lean Haimer caught it casually, unscrewed the lid and took a sip, and then filled it again. Take a bite.
In just a moment, Haimo breathed out the smell of alcohol and his face turned red. "It seems that you have made a lot of money recently, and the wine is good." He walked to Old John and sat down, and returned the wine bottle to Old John. John.
In this hellish place out west, every gold digger has three treasures.
The first treasure is their weapons and bullets. These are the things that must be carried to survive in the West. Without these, leaving the town limits is equivalent to going to death.
The second treasure is the hip flask. They will hang three to five flasks on their bodies and saddles. If the weather is cold, there will be more. This thing can not only provide some heat in winter, but also help them fall asleep quickly in summer. The wound can also be cleaned if necessary.
The third treasure is their mount. No good horse can catch up with those running money bags, nor can it escape the enemy's bullets.
Old John wiped the mouth of the wine bottle, screwed the lid back on and put it properly in his arms, "What about you, have you caught anything recently?"
Haimo laughed twice and made a gesture. This is a code word unique to the gold diggers group, which means a good harvest.
Don't tell people how much money you have. This is one of the rules that people who make a living in the West must abide by.
If you say too little you may miss some opportunities; if you say too much you may make some people jealous.
"What do you think they want to do when they call us here?" Heimer asked.
Old John touched the gun in the holster and grunted twice, "What else can you do? Haven't you noticed? We have more and more new faces here."
Unknown faces mean more strangers are flocking here, which is actually a very scary phenomenon, because if there is only one unfamiliar face for every ten people, it will be difficult for most people to notice it.
But when two or three out of ten people meet each other, they will realize that there is a stranger.
Only when this ratio is larger will people find that there are many strangers around them. This is because the number of strangers around them far exceeds the people they are familiar with!
New faces, strangers, these new players who have no idea how to join the game wantonly destroy the rules of the game here. Old John has been sniped on his way back and has already discovered that something is not right.
These people always appear in groups of twos and threes, which is different from the previous style. Moreover, these people do not go deep into the basin, but just rob the gold diggers returning to the city from the outside. They are not gold diggers at all, but robbers!
These people don't understand the rules very well, so the purpose of this gathering is to tell these newcomers that they must abide by the rules of the camp.
If you want money, then go to the depths of the mountains to exchange for your life, instead of hiding on the way back to the city like the other girls and firing cold shots.
Moreover, large-scale forces are not allowed here!
Haimer shook his head, "We should teach the newcomers some lessons to let them know who to listen to here."
"So we are here." Old John also had a positive attitude towards this.
If there are no rules, these hundreds of thousands of gold diggers will eventually become tools for exploitation and eventually turn into dust.
Why didn't a huge force appear among the more than 200,000 gold diggers in the camp before
In fact, it is very simple. When some people start to form a group, it will force other people to start forming a group spontaneously. When most people choose to appear in front of people in a collective way, the conflicts and hatred that may originally only belong to two people , it will escalate into hatred between the two groups.
Between new and old grudges, there will always be large organizational forces that will have frictions, collisions or even wars over some small issues that are actually very simple, and eventually disappear into the wild.
When the largest groups finally win out, those lone wolves will have no place to survive, and at the same time, the benefits gained by each gold digger will be diluted.
After all, they are organized people. Maybe the organization has fought with other forces when solving personal problems for some people. So shouldn't more benefits be given to the upper management of the organization
In the end, these gold diggers will repeat the old path outside. Most people are oppressed and exploited, and a few who do not need to take risks will gain fame and wealth. Classes and conflicts will naturally arise. In the end, they will be completely enslaved and eliminated by the major mining groups and forces. .
Therefore, no large-scale association behavior is allowed here. No one will care about three or two people, but not more.
To be honest, this is stupid. It seems to give everyone a sense of fairness and justice, but it also limits my own abilities.
Because there's really no difference between the best and the dumbest, but people love this.
When the two of them were talking, the valley was almost full. Almost everyone with a bit of fame and a decent name had been invited here. The twenty most famous gold diggers at the bottom of the valley made a gesture. Some gold diggers began to block the roads into the valley and check whether there were any uninvited people hiding around.
More than ten minutes later, a guy named Hawkeye, who was very famous among the gold diggers, stood up and said, "I believe you already know some of the reasons why we called everyone here..."
This guy's shooting skills are very accurate. With a shotgun with a range of only 120 meters, he can hit a rabbit 150 meters away. He may not be the most accurate, but he is the most famous.
With such words, the gold diggers on the hillside nodded one after another. As for whether they really know, we have to ask the wine bottles in their hands.
"Those newcomers have trampled on the rules we have maintained here for six years and destroyed the peaceful atmosphere here. They never dug out the ore from the ground with their own hands, but snatched it from our hands with bullets."
"We cannot continue to remain silent. This will only embolden their arrogance. We must fight back!"
When a few men face a large group of drunk men and say something that is equivalent to a declaration of war, the effect must be very good.
(End of chapter)