by Max Brand
“Friends?” said he who wore the stolen hat. “My dear girl, you must remember that no man has more than one friend in Slosson’s Gulch, and the name of that friend is gold. Now, don’t forget that!” And he heaved up his pick with a laugh to make another stroke.
“Ask Pedro Melendez if that is true!” she cried in answer. She regretted the words as soon as she had spoken them. But what other friend had she in camp, if her father was gone? Yet she had no right to name Melendez.
Bill’s pick was frozen in place, poised above his shoulder. “Melendez is his name, then?” he asked. “A greaser, I suppose. Why, then, I’ll have to look up this Melendez that’s to do all the tearing away and restoring.” And he fixed his steady, piercing eyes on her.
She was aware, then, suddenly, that he wore a revolver at each hip, even as he stood there in the hole, working. All the rest were armed, also. Suppose, indeed, that they were to start to find Melendez and take him to task?
She turned away toward her shack, knowing that she must find Melendez, if she could, and warn him of the danger in which he stood because of her foolishness. But how could she find him in Slosson’s Gulch? How could she go alone into the gambling halls where the men were crowded? There, alone, she could hope to locate him. To go to find one man in that town was like trying to locate one bee in a buzzing hive.
However, she was comforted by the knowledge that, even if she had brought Melendez into some danger, it could hardly be called an imminent one. If it would be hard for her to find him, it would be almost equally impossible for the others. So thought Louise Berenger, sitting moodily in front of her shack.
But all thought of Melendez passed suddenly from her mind. For she saw the sun flashing on the white Panama in the diggings across the way, and the shadow of her father crossed darkly across her mind and remained there.
For twenty-four hours he had been gone from her. Certainly nothing but death could have kept him away so long.
VII
HANS GRIMM’S PLACE
Of those gambling places in the town of Slosson’s Gulch, there was one that justly held preëminence. That was the institution of Hans Grimm. There is something about gaming that proprietors usually wish to keep secret, not only because it is illegal, but chiefly because they know in their consciences that they are taking an unfair advantage of their business patrons, so that the other gaming halls in Slos-son’s Gulch were maintained with a usual air of forbidding privacy, so far as that could be supported. No matter how dense or how eager a crowd frequented the gaming tables, there was sure to be half a dozen forbidding figures scattered here and there—the official bouncers who guarded the place against riots. And besides, a little air of darkness and of mystery surrounded each of the halls—but not in Grimm’s place.
Hans Grimm had risen to his present eminence from the gutters of Milwaukee. Starting life as a homeless street urchin, Hans had wandered far and wide, and gradually he had come to know human nature. He had been a trick bicycle rider in a circus for a time, and, when he came to Slosson’s Gulch, it seemed as though he was opening a little circus of his own, instead of a gambling house.
First he put up a seven-foot wooden fence in a circle around an ample piece of land. It was a good, stout fence, and it was secured still more by having a ditch run around it and dirt heaped up almost to the top of the boards, all around. This made a wall that shut out every breath of wind, defying the heat of the torrid western sun almost as thoroughly as a massive adobe wall.
Inside of this circular enclosure, Hans Grimm sank lordly pine trees, with their branches lopped off close to the trunk. And over the tops of these huge posts, he stretched a great quantity of canvas that had once been, it was said, actually a part of a circus tent. At any rate, in this fashion he established for himself a great theater for operations.
He kept it all open and free. Around the outer edges of the circle, there were seats and benches and little tables where anyone was free to sit and cool himself from the hot sun of Slosson’s Gulch. There would be no questions asked, and no one would ask them either to play at the tables or else to move on. Those little tables could be used, also, for little games of poker that had nothing to do with the profits of the house. Hans Grimm permitted this and never raised a hand to prevent it, although thousands of dollars were frittered away in this fashion, money that might legitimately have passed through his hands. He was contented to let smaller fish swim here and there as they pleased. But all was done so cheerfully, gaily, normally, and happily in the place of Hans Grimm that no man could sit long at the sides and look on.
This was like a circus, to be sure, but it was also a circus in which one need not remain in one’s seat. When one saw some lucky fellow standing at dice, taking in chips by the handful, one could go stand by his side, try to fathom his system, and do a little betting one’s self—nothing much—only a dollar or two, perhaps. But if one won, it was foolish to stop, and if one lost, it was ridiculous to stop before the tide of fortune changed. Bad luck cannot keep on forever! There was no fear of crooked devices in the gambling house of Hans Grimm; there was a sunny surety of honesty in his establishment.
So men found it easier to bet with Hans Grimm. They found it easier to bet high, also, which is the main point. So that, after all, Hans began to draw two-thirds of all the gaming business in Slosson’s Gulch into his place. Yet there never seemed to be a tumult in Grimm’s house. There was never a jam, a hustling of shoulders against shoulders, except when some exciting piece of play took place at one of the tables, and a throng of spectators gathered. There was never a dense cloud of tobacco smoke, never an annoying sense of guards and bouncers, here and there, to make one feel that one had entered either a prison or a den of thieves.
Now and again a man could be seen carrying a heavy satchel to one of the tables or taking it away again. A continual current of coin was flowing in at Grimm’s in order that the winnings of the gamblers might be paid. When such a river of fortune was running away, who would be so foolish as to miss a chance to dip his hand into the golden stream? So thought the people of Slosson’s Gulch, and so thought the six men who had commenced their digging so close to the lean-to of Berenger.
They had done enough work for one day. Now they drew straws to see who should seek relaxation in the gulch, and what two must remain to guard the claim. The Negro and the Dane were the unlucky ones who had to remain behind. The other four strode off down the valley, tired, but very happy, with the Panama on the head of Bill Legrain showing them the way like a beacon light. Although the others went eagerly, he went with the swiftness of a hawk to a familiar hunting field. The talents of Bill Legrain were many, but in no sphere was he so much at home as at the gaming table.
Ordinarily he did not waste his time in Hans Grimm’s house. He had not much use for Grimm and for the methods that were in vogue there. There was no opening for the talents of an outsider. No matter what skill might be in the dexterous fingers of Bill, Mr. Grimm could not find a place for him in his scheme of things.
But Grimm was apt to say: “There ain’t any real use in faking the machines. When a man wants to throw his money away in gambling, he’s gonna do it, and he don’t have to have any brakes working on the roulette wheel to help in the robbing of him.”
This was the opinion of Hans Grimm, and, since he had made a tidy fortune in gambling houses, he was entitled to a viewpoint of his own. But Mr. Legrain leaned more to the old usages. He patronized the other places in Slosson’s Gulch, where the proprietors were not averse to keeping a few “outside men” working from time to time and, like lions, allowing jackals to feast on the kills. However, on this day of days, there was too much happiness in the heart of Mr. Legrain. His pals and he had made a strike that might lead on to fortune for them all. When one is digging gold out of the bowels of the earth, one is also willing to risk one’s affairs in new fields.
So Legrain led his fellows to the home of Hans Grimm. “We’ll take a few thousand out of the pockets
of the Dutchman tonight,” said Legrain.
Stepping up to the table where poker dice were being rolled, he lost $500 in five bitter minutes. Then he came back and, with his eye, he challenged his friends to try their fortune at this table, also. They lost—with a ridiculous speed and surety.
“The dice ain’t rolling for us tonight,” said the Yankee as he came from the crowd and rejoined his companions.
“The dice ain’t rolling? The dice is crooked!” said another.
“You’re right,” declared Legrain, white with passion. “It’s a crooked game. Too good to use me, the Dutchman is. He keeps his hands clean, he tells me. And here he is running the dirtiest game in the town. I hate a hypocrite. And I’ll get Hans Grimm for this. Because, by heaven, I hate a hypocrite!” His upper lip furled like the lip of a snarling wolf, and his eyes flashed to this side and to that, as though in search of a victim to be sacrificed to his bitter humor. Just at that moment, there was a little outbreak of applause from the cluster around a table at the upper end of the room.
“Somebody’s winning there,” said the Yankee. “Somebody’s winning big, too, by the sound of things.”
“Bah,” said Legrain, “do you fall for that stuff, Jerry? They’re just playing with some sucker, and they’ll trim him, pretty soon, of everything that he ever could call his own. I know this kind of a dive. Crooked and got no heart in ’em. Clean you out in this kind of place, where they’re always talking up how white they are, and how straight they keep their games. But it’s a dirty dive, boys, and I’m going to let the town know the truth about it.”
So said Legrain, with spite swelling poisonously in him, and, just as he finished his little speech, to which his friends listened with gravely nodding heads, there was a fresh clamor from the farther end of the room.
They could not resist the temptation. They crowded together with the other watchers around the roulette wheel. At the roulette table, usually so packed with players, there was now only a single man playing, smoking a cigarette, and placing his bets in heaps here and there about the board.
“A system, and a knock-out of a system, at that,” murmured the crowd.
But this player of the “system” consulted no paper covered with figures, before he laid his bets. He staked and staked again with the utmost rapidity, and the intervals between the spinnings of the wheel were short, indeed.
He was a young fellow, very sun-browned, with pale blue eyes, and a scar across one cheek, like a thin, white line. And he took his gambling very lightly. Neither winning nor losing could change his smile. Even as Legrain and his companions looked on, they saw him stake $100 on the number nine, and they saw the croupier push out $3,500 to pay the winner!
$3,500 at a single stroke!
“Who is he?” asked Legrain enviously, as the noisy cheering died down.
“His name is Melendez . . . that’s all I know,” was the answer.
VIII
THE GIRL’S MAN
An elbow sank in the ribs of Legrain. He turned and saw the lean face of the Yankee beside him.
“It’s the girl’s man,” said the Yankee.
“I’m not deaf,” said Legrain. “What if it is her man?”
“The one that’s going to do the tearing to pieces,” said the Yankee insistently. “You know what I mean!”
Legrain scowled. He knew well enough what the Yankee meant, and the same meaning was in the eagerly anticipatory faces of the rest of his friends. They expected action from their leader, and Legrain knew it.
But of all the men he had stood up to in a long and varied career of battle, he had never seen one that appealed to him less as an antagonist. He did not mind surly savagery in another man. He could handle the bitter natures well enough, because usually they were either too sluggish or too nervous. Nor did he object to taking his chances with fellows whose faces showed the animal cunning that was in them, because he would freely match cunning against cunning. He loved to encounter men who were running berserk in the madness of too much whiskey beneath the belt.
But, above all things, he avoided as most dangerous the smiling men, and yonder Melendez at the roulette table was decidedly the smiling type. Having put $3,000 of his winnings on the black—and lost—he merely chuckled. He placed another $1,000 on the same color. It was swept away in due course by the croupier. Still Melendez smiled. And the more he smiled, the more intensely Mr. Legrain was worried.
He looked back to the Yankee and the others, and he found that their eyes were still fixed expectantly upon him. What was he to do? Yonder Melendez had been formally announced by the girl as a prospective enemy; it was up to Legrain to nip his hostility in the bud. By just such exhibitions of his power had he been able to maintain his authority among his followers.
Yet the more he examined Mr. Melendez, the less he liked the affair. Whether it was the long-fingered, strong hand of this young man, the depth of his chest, or the wiry strength of his arms, there was nothing about him that promised an easy foe. Perhaps the worst of all was the fact that no weapon appeared on his person. In this crowd there was hardly a soul who did not wear his Colt in open view, as if to show that he was ready and prepared to defend himself and his rights. But Legrain felt that he knew enough about human nature in the West to be sure that, when no weapon showed, it was because the man who appeared so innocent of guns and gunpowder was in fact so deadly an expert that he knew how to conjure forth a Colt from beneath his coat as swiftly as another could yank his weapon out of a holster.
In places a little less rough than Slosson’s Gulch, did not Mr. Legrain himself carry his weapons out of sight? So he felt for Melendez as one expert for another. Under that smile he told himself that there was the coolest set of nerves that had ever been furnished to a human being. Those long, strong fingers would snap out a revolver with the expedition of a cat pawing at a mouse.
Altogether the affair looked most unpromising to Legrain. Again and again the stranger lost, and still his good nature was a fort that was not in the slightest shaken. Finally he pushed back his chair and stood up, nodding to the crowd of sympathetic spectators.
“That’s all, boys,” he said. “I’ve had my licking!”
They gave him a hearty cheer of approval for the fine way in which he had taken his defeat after being so near to a great coup. He could easily have lingered, in order to collect their kindness and their respect, easily have remained to let fall remarks about other exploits of his that had turned out more favorably. Almost any man, Legrain felt, must have succumbed to some of these temptations to fix himself in the minds of so many spectators as a hero. For this, Legrain waited and watched. It would be a sign of a human failing, but still it would be a failing that would supply a bit of confidence to him.
Yet none of these things was done by Melendez. He made his way through the crowd, adroitly avoiding those who would have talked with him. Presently it would have been hard to tell where he had disappeared, had not Legrain followed all of his windings and known that the stranger was standing in the crowd that watched at another table. Although, if Legrain had not known, there were others at hand ready to keep him advised.
“He’s yonder!” the Yankee said, pointing, with a leer of savage pleasure.
Legrain set his teeth. He knew that these fellows did not love him. They feared him and they respected his accuracy and speed with a gun as well as a certain daring and adroitness of mind that were his. But they had no fondness for him. They followed him, still, as the coyotes will follow the ranging lobo, expectant of cheap food after the hero of the range has made his kill. Now, no doubt, the Yankee and the rest would be fully as pleased to see their leader thoroughly beaten and crushed as they would be to see him defeat the gambler.
Backwards and forwards, Legrain balanced the matter. He was no sentimentalist but, after all, he liked to have his following, his audience, to wonder at his cleverness and his cruel boldness of maneuver. These were his men, and, if he did not down Melendez, their faith in h
im would be dreadfully shaken. He would be a lost leader in a very short time, no doubt.
Believing that, Legrain felt that there might be a very great danger in Melendez. He determined instantly to put the matter to the touch.
The instant that he had made up his mind, he determined to put his re-resolve into execution before too much thinking weakened it. He went straight across the room, with his followers drifting hungrily behind him. In his heart of hearts he scorned them utterly, and in his heart of hearts he admired his own courage immensely.
As he entered the little crowd at the farther table, there was an end of the gaming that had drawn their interest. All faces turned suddenly toward Legrain, and men shouldered past him. He was very glad of this. For, having made up his own mind in just such a moment of confusion as this was, he might be able to find his opportunity and take advantage of surprise to help him beat Melendez.
So he put himself in the way of the other, weaving through the crowd. As the tall, brown-faced youth came by him, Legrain drooped his shoulder and jarred heavily against his enemy.
With the same instant he spun about on toe and heel, his voice screeching a harsh challenge. “Curse you!” yelled Legrain, “do you own this place and everybody in it? Are we dirt for you to kick around in front of you!”
At the first sound of his voice, the brown-faced man spun around to face him with such instant speed, that Legrain looked for the sparkle of a gun in the hand of the other. His own Colt was out and leveled; he intended to shoot, and shoot to kill, the instant that he spotted a weapon in the grip of Melendez.
But there was no weapon there, and, having the drop upon the stranger, Legrain, vastly reënforced in spirit, poured out the rest of his insulting speech. It was as though a bomb had exploded. A sudden rush on all sides jammed the crowd back, leaving a gaping hole in the center, where Legrain and his opponent stood face to face.