by Zane Grey
Kells held Joan a second, as if he meant to embrace her, but he did not. “Lord, it’s good to see you! I never expected to again.... But you can tell me all about yourself after you rest.... I was just having breakfast. I’ll fetch you some.”
“Were you alone here?” asked Joan.
“Yes. I was with Bate and Handy—”
“Hey, Kells!” roared the gang, from the outer room.
Kells held aside the blanket curtain so that Joan was able to see through the door. The men were drawn up in a half-circle round the table, upon which were the bags of gold.
Kells whistled low. “Joan, there’ll be trouble now,” he said, “but don’t you fear. I’ll not forget you.”
Despite his undoubted sincerity Joan felt a subtle change in him, and that, coupled with the significance of his words, brought a return of the strange dread. Kells went out and dropped the curtain behind him. Joan listened.
“Share and share alike!” boomed the giant Gulden.
“Say!” called Kells, gaily, “aren’t you fellows going to eat first?”
Shouts of derision greeted his sally.
“I’ll eat gold-dust,” added Budd.
“Have it your own way, men,” responded Kells. “Blicky, get the scales down off of that shelf.... Say, I’ll bet anybody I’ll have the most dust by sundown.”
More shouts of derision were flung at him.
“Who wants to gamble now?”
“Boss, I’ll take thet bet.”
“Haw! Haw! You won’t look so bright by sundown.”
Then followed a moment’s silence, presently broken by a clink of metal on the table.
“Boss, how’d you ever git wind of this big shipment of gold?” asked Jesse Smith.
“I’ve had it spotted. But Handy Oliver was the scout.”
“We’ll shore drink to Handy!” exclaimed one of the bandits.
“An’ who was sendin’ out this shipment?” queried the curious Smith. “Them bags are marked all the same.”
“It was a one-man shipment,” replied Kells. “Sent out by the boss miner of Alder Creek. They call him Overland something.”
That name brought Joan to her feet with a thrilling fire. Her uncle, old Bill Hoadley, was called “Overland.” Was it possible that the bandits meant him? It could hardly be; that name was a common one in the mountains.
“Shore, I seen Overland lots of times,” said Budd. “An’ he got wise to my watchin’ him.”
“Somebody tipped it off that the Legion was after his gold,” went on Kells. “I suppose we have Pearce to thank for that. But it worked out well for us. The hell we raised there at the lynching must have thrown a scare into Overland. He had nerve enough to try to send his dust to Bannack on the very next stage. He nearly got away with it, too. For it was only lucky accident that Handy heard the news.”
The name Overland drew Joan like a magnet and she arose to take her old position, where she could peep in upon the bandits. One glance at Jim Cleve told her that he, too, had been excited by the name. Then it occurred to Joan that her uncle could hardly have been at Alder Creek without Jim knowing it. Still, among thousands of men, all wild and toiling and self-sufficient, hiding their identities, anything might be possible. After a few moments, however, Joan leaned to the improbability of the man being her uncle.
Kells sat down before the table and Blicky stood beside him with the gold-scales. The other bandits lined up opposite. Jim Cleve stood to one side, watching, brooding.
“You can’t weigh it all on these scales,” said Blicky.
“That’s sure,” replied Kells. “We’ll divide the small bags first.... Ten shares — ten equal parts!... Spill out the bags. Blick. And hurry. Look how hungry Gulden looks!... Somebody cook your breakfast while we divide the gold.”
“Haw! Haw!”
“Ho! Ho!”
“Who wants to eat?”
The bandits were gay, derisive, scornful, eager, like a group of boys, half surly, half playful, at a game.
“Wal, I shore want to see my share weighted,” drawled Budd.
Kells moved — his gun flashed — he slammed it hard upon the table.
“Budd, do you question my honesty?” he asked, quick and hard.
“No offense, boss. I was just talkin’.”
That quick change of Kells’s marked a subtle difference in the spirit of the bandits and the occasion. Gaiety and good humor and badinage ended. There were no more broad grins or friendly leers or coarse laughs. Gulden and his groups clustered closer to the table, quiet, intense, watchful, suspicious.
It did not take Kells and his assistant long to divide the smaller quantity of the gold.
“Here, Gulden,” he said, and handed the giant a bag. Jesse.... Bossert.... Pike.... Beady.... Braverman... “Blicky.”
“Here, Jim Cleve, get in the game,” he added, throwing a bag at Jim. It was heavy. It hit Jim with a thud and dropped to the ground. He stooped to reach it.
“That leaves one for Handy and one for me,” went on Kells. “Blicky, spill out the big bag.”
Presently Joan saw a huge mound of dull, gleaming yellow. The color of it leaped to the glinting eyes of the bandits. And it seemed to her that a shadow hovered over them. The movements of Kells grew tense and hurried. Beads of sweat stood out upon his brow. His hands were not steady.
Soon larger bags were distributed to the bandits. That broke the waiting, the watchfulness, but not the tense eagerness. The bandits were now like leashed hounds. Blicky leaned before Kells and hit the table with his fist.
“Boss, I’ve a kick comin’,” he said.
“Come on with it,” replied the leader.
“Ain’t Gulden a-goin’ to divide up thet big nugget?”
“He is if he’s square.”
A chorus of affirmatives from the bandits strengthened Kells’s statement. Gulden moved heavily and ponderously, and he pushed some of his comrades aside to get nearer to Kells.
“Wasn’t it my right to do a job by myself — when I wanted?” he demanded.
“No. I agreed to let you fight when you wanted. To kill a man when you liked!... That was the agreement.”
“What’d I kill a man for?”
No one answered that in words, but the answer was there, in dark faces.
“I know what I meant,” continued Gulden. “And I’m going to keep this nugget.”
There was a moment’s silence. It boded ill to the giant.
“So — he declares himself,” said Blicky, hotly. “Boss, what you say goes.”
“Let him keep it,” declared Kells, scornfully. “I’ll win it from him and divide it with the gang.”
That was received with hoarse acclaims by all except Gulden. He glared sullenly. Kells stood up and shook a long finger in the giant’s face.
“I’ll win your nugget,” he shouted. “I’ll beat you at any game.... I call your hand.... Now if you’ve got any nerve!”
“Come on!” boomed the giant, and he threw his gold down upon the table with a crash.
The bandits closed in around the table with sudden, hard violence, all crowding for seats.
“I’m a-goin’ to set in the game!” yelled Blicky.
“We’ll all set in,” declared Jesse Smith.
“Come on!” was Gulden’s acquiescence.
“But we all can’t play at once,” protested Kells. “Let’s make up two games.”
“Naw!”
“Some of you eat, then, while the others get cleaned out.”
“Thet’s it — cleaned out!” ejaculated Budd, meanly. “You seem to be sure, Kells. An’ I guess I’ll keep shady of thet game.”
“That’s twice for you, Budd,” flashed the bandit leader. “Beware of the third time!”
“Hyar, fellers, cut the cards fer who sets in an’ who sets out,” called Blicky, and he slapped a deck of cards upon the table.
With grim eagerness, as if drawing lots against fate, the bandits bent over and drew cards. Budd, Bra
verman, and Beady Jones were the ones excluded from the game.
“Beady, you fellows unpack those horses and turn them loose. And bring the stuff inside,” said Kells.
Budd showed a surly disregard, but the other two bandits got up willingly and went out.
Then the game began, with only Cleve standing, looking on. The bandits were mostly silent; they moved their hands, and occasionally bent forward. It was every man against his neighbor. Gulden seemed implacably indifferent and played like a machine. Blicky sat eager and excited, under a spell. Jesse Smith was a slow, cool, shrewed gambler. Bossert and Pike, two ruffians almost unknown to Joan, appeared carried away by their opportunity. And Kells began to wear that strange, rapt, weak expression that gambling gave him.
Presently Beady Jones and Braverman bustled in, carrying the packs. Then Budd jumped up and ran to them. He returned to the table, carrying a demijohn, which he banged upon the table.
“Whisky!” exclaimed Kells. “Take that away. We can’t drink and gamble.”
“Watch me!” replied Blicky.
“Let them drink, Kells,” declared Gulden. “We’ll get their dust quicker. Then we can have our game.”
Kells made no more comment. The game went on and the aspect of it changed. When Kells himself began to drink, seemingly unconscious of the fact, Joan’s dread increased greatly, and, leaving the peep-hole, she lay back upon the bed. Always a sword had hung over her head. Time after time by some fortunate circumstance or by courage or wit or by an act of Providence she had escaped what strangely menaced. Would she escape it again? For she felt the catastrophe coming. Did Jim recognize that fact? Remembering the look on his face, she was assured that he did. Then he would be quick to seize upon any possible chance to get her away; and always he would be between her and those bandits. At most, then, she had only death to fear — death that he would mercifully deal to her if the worst came. And as she lay there listening to the slow-rising murmur of the gamblers, with her thought growing clearer, she realized it was love of Jim and fear for him — fear that he would lose her — that caused her cold dread and the laboring breath and the weighted heart. She had cost Jim this terrible experience and she wanted to make up to him for it, to give him herself and all her life.
Joan lay there a long time, thinking and suffering, while the strange, morbid desire to watch Kells and Gulden grew stronger and stronger, until it was irresistible. Her fate, her life, lay in the balance between these two men. She divined that.
She returned to her vantage-point, and as she glanced through she vibrated to a shock. The change that had begun subtly, intangibly, was now a terrible and glaring difference. That great quantity of gold, the equal chance of every gambler, the marvelous possibilities presented to evil minds, and the hell that hid in that black bottle — these had made playthings of every bandit except Gulden. He was exactly the same as ever. But to see the others sent a chill of ice along Joan’s veins. Kells was white and rapt. Plain to see — he had won! Blicky was wild with rage. Jesse Smith sat darker, grimmer, but no longer cool. There was hate in the glance he fastened upon Kells as he bet. Beady Jones and Braverman showed an inflamed and impotent eagerness to take their turn. Budd sat in the game now, and his face wore a terrible look. Joan could not tell what passion drove him, but she knew he was a loser. Pike and Bossert likewise were losers, and stood apart, sullen, watching with sick, jealous rage. Jim Cleve had reacted to the strain, and he was white, with nervous, clutching hands and piercing glances. And the game went on with violent slap of card or pound of fist upon the table, with the slide of a bag of gold or the little, sodden thump of its weight, with savage curses at loss and strange, raw exultation at gain, with hurry and violence — more than all, with the wildness of the hour and the wildness of these men, drawing closer and closer to the dread climax that from the beginning had been foreshadowed.
Suddenly Budd rose and bent over the table, his cards clutched in a shaking hand, his face distorted and malignant, his eyes burning at Kells. Passionately he threw the cards down.
“There!” he yelled, hoarsely, and he stilled the noise.
“No good!” replied Kells, tauntingly. “Is there any other game you play?”
Budd bent low to see the cards in Kells’s hand, and then, straightening his form, he gazed with haggard fury at the winner. “You’ve done me!... I’m cleaned — I’m busted!” he raved.
“You were easy. Get out of the game,” replied Kells, with an exultant contempt. It was not the passion of play that now obsessed him, but the passion of success.
“I said you done me,” burst out Budd, insanely. “You’re slick with the cards!”
The accusation acted like magic to silence the bandits, to check movement, to clamp the situation. Kells was white and radiant; he seemed careless and nonchalant.
“All right, Budd,” he replied, but his tone did not suit his strange look. “That’s three times for you!”
Swift as a flash he shot. Budd fell over Gulden, and the giant with one sweep of his arm threw the stricken bandit off. Budd fell heavily, and neither moved nor spoke.
“Pass me the bottle,” went on Kells, a little hoarse shakiness in his voice. “And go on with the game!”
“Can I set in now?” asked Beady Jones, eagerly.
“You and Jack wait. This’s getting to be all between Kells an’ me,” said Gulden.
“We’ve sure got Blicky done!” exclaimed Kells. There was something taunting about the leader’s words. He did not care for the gold. It was the fight to win. It was his egotism.
“Make this game faster an’ bigger, will you?” retorted Blicky, who seemed inflamed.
“Boss, a little luck makes you lofty,” interposed Jesse Smith in dark disdain. “Pretty soon you’ll show yellow clear to your gizzard!”
The gold lay there on the table. It was only a means to an end. It signified nothing. The evil, the terrible greed, the brutal lust, were in the hearts of the men. And hate, liberated, rampant, stalked out unconcealed, ready for blood.
“Gulden, change the game to suit these gents,” taunted Kells.
“Double stakes. Cut the cards!” boomed the giant, instantly.
Blicky lasted only a few more deals of the cards, then he rose, loser of all his share, a passionate and venomous bandit, ready for murder. But he kept his mouth shut and looked wary.
“Boss, can’t we set in now?” demanded Beady Jones.
“Say, Beady, you’re in a hurry to lose your gold,” replied Kells. “Wait till I beat Gulden and Smith.”
Luck turned against Jesse Smith. He lost first to Gulden, then to Kells, and presently he rose, a beaten, but game man. He reached for the whisky.
“Fellers, I reckon I can enjoy Kells’s yellow streak more when I ain’t playin’,” he said.
The bandit leader eyed Smith with awakening rancor, as if a persistent hint of inevitable weakness had its effect. He frowned, and the radiance left his face for the forbidding cast.
“Stand around, you men, and see some real gambling,” he said.
At this moment in the contest Kells had twice as much gold as Gulden, there being a huge mound of little buckskin sacks in front of him.
They began staking a bag at a time and cutting the cards, the higher card winning. Kells won the first four cuts. How strangely that radiance returned to his face! Then he lost and won, and won and lost. The other bandits grouped around, only Jones and Braverman now manifesting any eagerness. All were silent. There were suspense, strain, mystery in the air. Gulden began to win consistently and Kells began to change. It was a sad and strange sight to see this strong man’s nerve and force gradually deteriorate under a fickle fortune. The time came when half the amount he had collected was in front of Gulden. The giant was imperturbable. He might have been a huge animal, or destiny, or something inhuman that knew the run of luck would be his. As he had taken losses so he greeted gains — with absolute indifference. While Kells’s hands shook the giant’s were steady and slow an
d sure. It must have been hateful to Kells — this faculty of Gulden’s to meet victory identically as he met defeat. The test of a great gambler’s nerve was not in sustaining loss, but in remaining cool with victory. The fact grew manifest that Gulden was a great gambler and Kells was not. The giant had no emotion, no imagination. And Kells seemed all fire and whirling hope and despair and rage. His vanity began to bleed to death. This game was the deciding contest. The scornful and exultant looks of his men proved how that game was going. Again and again Kells’s unsteady hand reached for one of the whisky bottles. Once with a low curse he threw an empty bottle through the door.
“Hey, boss, ain’t it about time—” began Jesse Smith. But whatever he had intended to say, he thought better of, withholding it. Kells’s sudden look and movement were unmistakable.
The goddess of chance, as false as the bandit’s vanity, played with him. He brightened under a streak of winning. But just as his face began to lose its haggard shade, to glow, the tide again turned against him. He lost and lost, and with each bag of gold-dust went something of his spirit. And when he was reduced to his original share he indeed showed that yellow streak which Jesse Smith had attributed to him. The bandit’s effort to pull himself together, to be a man before that scornful gang, was pitiful and futile. He might have been magnificent, confronted by other issues, of peril or circumstance, but there he was craven. He was a man who should never have gambled.
One after the other, in quick succession, he lost the two bags of gold, his original share. He had lost utterly. Gulden had the great heap of dirty little buckskin sacks, so significant of the hidden power within.
Joan was amazed and sick at sight of Kells then, and if it had been possible she would have withdrawn her gaze. But she was chained there. The catastrophe was imminent.
Kells stared down at the gold. His jaw worked convulsively. He had the eyes of a trapped wolf. Yet he seemed not wholly to comprehend what had happened to him.
Gulden rose, slow, heavy, ponderous, to tower over his heap of gold. Then this giant, who had never shown an emotion, suddenly, terribly blazed.