by Max Brand
Here was all that he could wish for. One glance assured him that the place was square. A second glance told him that the stakes were running mountain high, for these gamblers had dug their gold raw out of the ground, and they were willing to throw it away as though it were so much dirt. Gerald saw a thousand dollars won on the turn of a card and then turned his back resolutely on the place and faced the open door through which new patrons were streaming. The good resolve was still strong as iron in him. The clean life and the free life still beckoned him on! And, with a heart which rose high with the sense of his virtue, he had almost reached the door when he heard some one calling from the side.
“Hello, Tommy!” said the voice. “Here’s your place. Better luck tonight!”
Gerald turned to see what this Tommy might be, and he found a fellow in the late twenties, tall, strong, handsome, a veritable ideal of all that a man should be in outward appearance. But there was a promise of something more than mere good looks in him. There was a steadiness in his blue eyes that Gerald liked, and he had the frank and ready smile of one who has nothing to conceal from the world.
He knew in a thrice that this was the “Tommy dear” of the girl. And Gerald paused—paused to take out his cigarette case and begin another smoke. In reality, he was lingering to watch the other man more closely. And how could he linger so near without being invited?
“We need five to make up a good game,” the dealer for Canton Douglas was saying. “Where’s a fifth? You, Alex? Sit in, Hamilton? Then what about you, stranger?”
Four faces turned suddenly upon Gerald.
After all, he said to himself, he would make a point of not winning. He would make a point of rising from the table with exactly the same amount with which he sat down.
“I’ll be very happy to sit in,” said Gerald. He paused behind his chair. “My name is Kern, gentlemen,” he said.
They blundered to their feet, gave their names, shook hands with him; as he touched each hand he knew by the awe in their eyes that they had heard the tale of the breaking of the wire in the hotel. Nay, they had heard even more, for the news of the riding of Sorrow and the encounter with Harkey had followed him as the wake follows the ship. After all, Harkey was a known man for the weight of his fists, and scientific boxing seems always miraculous to the uninitiated.
So Gerald sat down facing Tommy Vance, and the game began. As for the cards and the game itself, Gerald gave them only a tithe of his attention. They were younglings, these fellows. Not in years to be sure, but their experience compared with his was as that of the new-born babe to the seer of three score and ten. Even Canton Douglas’s dealer was a child. In the course of three hands, Gerald knew them all. In the course of six hands, he could begin to tell within a shade of the truth what each man held, and automatically he regulated his betting in accordance. In spite of himself, he was winning, and twice he had to throw money away on worthless hands to keep his stack of chips down to modest proportions.
In the meantime, he was studying Tommy Vance. And what barbed every glance and every thought he gave to Tommy was the picture of the girl in the cabin door. It was odd how closely she lingered in his mind. The ring of her voice seemed always just around the corner in his memory. Through the shadow on her face, he still looked back to her smile. And why under heaven, he asked himself, did he dwell so much on her? There had been other women in the past ten years. There had been a score of them, and not one had really mattered. But when he paused on that dark hillside, it seemed that the door of his soul had been open and the girl had stepped inside.
So he watched every move of Tommy Vance, for every move of a man at a poker game means something. What better test of a man’s generosity or steady nerve or careless good nature or venomous malice or envy or wild courage? And the more he saw of Tommy the more good there was in him, and the more dread grew like the falling of a shadow in Gerald.
Men who have seen much evil, and stained their hands with it, are still more sensitive to all that is good. They scent it afar. And all that Gerald saw of big Tom Vance was truest steel. He gambled like a boy playing tag, whole-heartedly, carelessly. When the strong cards were in his hand, how could he keep the mischievous light out of his blue eyes? And yet when his hand was strongest and one of the five had been driven to the wall, Gerald saw him push up the betting and then lay down his cards.
It was a small thing, but it meant much in the eyes of Gerald. He prided himself on his manner and his courtesy, but here was a gentleman by the grace of heaven, and by contrast Gerald felt small and low indeed!
Then Tommy Vance pushed back his chair.
“I’ve dropped enough to make it square for me to draw out, fellows?” he asked.
“You’re not leaving, Tommy?” asked the dealer earnestly. “If you go, the snap is out of the game.”
“There’s another game for Tommy,” and a hard-handed miner chuckled on Gerald’s right. “She’s waiting for you now, I guess. Is that right, Tommy?”
And Tommy flushed to the eyes, then laughed with a frankness and a happiness that sent a pang of pain through the heart of Gerald.
“She’s waiting, Lord bless her,” he said.
“Then hurry,” said the dealer, “before another fellow steps in and takes up her time.”
“Her time?” said Tommy, throwing up his head. “Her time? Boys, there ain’t another like her. She’s truer than steel and better than gold. She’s.…”
He checked himself as though realizing that this was no place for pouring forth encomiums on the lady of his heart.
“This breaks up the game, and I’m leaving,” said Gerald, rising in turn.
“Are you going up the hill?” said Tommy Vance eagerly.
“I’ll walk a step or two with you,” said Gerald.
They walked out together into the night, and as they passed down the hall Gerald felt many eyes drawn after him. Yes, it was very plain that all Culver City had heard of his adventures. But now they were out under the stars. Not even the stars which burn low over the wide horizon of the Sahara seemed as bright to Gerald as this heaven above his home mountains.
“Now that we’re out here alone,” said Vance, “I don’t mind telling you what everybody else in Culver City is thinking…that was pretty neat the way you handled Red Charlie. That hound has been barking up every tree that held a fight in it. The town will be a pile quieter now that he’s gone. Only, how in the name of the devil did you have the nerve to take a chance with that wire?”
“How in the same name,” answered Gerald quietly “were you induced to lay down that hand of yours which must have been a full house at least…that hand you bet on up to fifty dollars and then laid down to the fellow on my right?”
“Ah?” laughed Tommy Vance. “You knew that? Well, you must be able to look through the backs of the cards. It was a full house, right enough. Three queens on a pair of nines. It looked like money in the bank. But I saw that I’d break poor old Hampton. And that would have spoiled his fun for the evening.”
“You’re rich in happiness, then,” said Gerald. “A good time for every one when you’re so happy yourself, eh?”
“Yes,” and Tom Vance nodded. “I feel as though my hands were full of gold…a treasure that can’t be exhausted. And…well, I won’t tire you out talking about a girl you’ve never seen! But Jack Parker brought her into the talk, you know,” he apologized.
“I like to hear you,” said Gerald. “It’s an old story, perhaps. But what interests me is that every fellow always feels that he is writing chapter one of a new book. I remember hearing a man who was about to marry for the third time. By the Lord, he was as enthusiastic as you. It’s the eternal illusion, I suppose. A man cannot help thinking, when he’s in love, that a woman will be true and faithful…pure as the snow, true as steel. That’s the way of it.” And he chuckled softly.
It was entirely a forced laugh, and from the corner of his eye he was studying the effect of his talk upon Tommy Vance. He was studying hi
m as the scientist studies the insect and its wriggling under the prick of the needle and the acid. And certainly Tommy Vance was hard hit. By his scowl and the outthrust of his lower jaw, Gerald gathered that his companion would have fought sooner than submit to such observations as these had they been made in other than the most casual and good-natured manner.
“You sort of figure,” said Tommy Vance, “that women are pretty apt to…pretty apt to….”
He was stuck for words.
“I hate to generalize on such a subject,” said Gerald. “Every idiot talks wisely about women. But a man in love is a blind man. He wakens sometimes in a short period. Sometimes he stays blind until he dies. But I never see a pretty girl that I don’t think of the spider, so full of wiles…and such instinctive wiles. She can’t help smiling in a certain way which you and I both know. And that smile is like dynamite. It’s a destructive force. Am I not right, Vance?”
So saying, he clapped his companion lightly on the shoulder, and Vance turned a wan smile upon him. It was delightful to be treated so familiarly by one who had so lately made himself a hero in the town. But still the brow of Tommy was clouded.
“Maybe there’s something in what you say,” he admitted. “But still, as far as Kate Maddern is concerned, Id swear.…”
His voice stumbled away to nothing.
“Your lady?” said Gerald gaily, forcing his casual tone with the most perfect artistry. “Of course she’s the exception. She would be true to you if there were an ocean and ten years between you!”
But here Tommy Vance came to an abrupt halt and faced Gerald, and the latter knew, with a leaping heart, that he was succeeding better than he had ever dreamed he could.
IV “Vance Makes a Bet”
Look here” said Vance, “of course I know you’re talking about womenfolk in general, but every time you speak like that I keep seeing Kate’s face, and it’s uncomfortable.”
Oh, jealous heart of a lover! Masked by the black of night, Gerald smiled with satisfaction. How fast the fish was rising to the bait!
“As I said before,” said Gerald, “I haven’t her in mind at all. She’s all that you dream of her, of course.”
“That’s just talk…just words,” said Tommy Vance. “Between you and me, you think she’s most apt to be like the rest.”
“If you wish to pin me down.…”
“Kern,” said Vance, “if I was to go away tonight and never come back for twenty years, she’d still be waiting for me!”
“My dear fellow!”
“Well?”
“If you actually failed to keep your appointment with her?”
“Actually that.”
“Well,” said Gerald carelessly, “putting all due respect to your lady to the side so that we may speak freely….”
“Go ahead,” said Tommy Vance.
“Well, then, speaking on the basis of what I’ve seen and heard, I’d venture that if you go away tonight and don’t come back for ten days….”
“Well?” exclaimed Tommy.
“When you came back, you’d find a cold reception, Tommy.”
“I could explain everything in five seconds.”
“Suppose she’d grown lonely in the meantime? If she’s a pretty girl and the town’s full of young fellows with nothing to do in the evening…you understand, Vance.”
There was a groan from Vance as the iron of doubt entered his spirit.
“It makes me sort of sick,” he murmured. “How do I know what she’d do? But no, she’d never look at another gent!”
“How long have you been engaged?” asked Gerald.
“Oh, about a month.”
“Have you been away from her for more than twelve hours during that time?
“No,” admitted Tommy reluctantly.
“My dear fellow, then you know that you’re talking simply from guesswork.”
Tommy was quiet, breathing hard. At length he said: “If she was to draw away from me simply because I missed seeing her one night and was away for ten days, why, I’d never speak to her again. I’d never want to see her again!”
But Gerald laughed.
“That’s what they usually say,” he declared. “But after the smoke has cleared away, they settle back to happiness again. They wear a scar, but they try to forget. They wish themselves back into a blind state. And so they marry. Ten years later they begin to remember. They hearken back to the old wounds, and then comes the crash! That’s what wrecks a home….”
He broke off and changed his tone before he went on: “But of course no man dares to test a woman before he makes her his wife. He tests a horse before he buys it; he tests gold before he mines for it; but he doesn’t get a proof in the most important question of all! Pure blindness, Tom Vance!”
“Suppose…,” groaned Tommy Vance, his head lowered.
He did not finish his sentence. He did not need to, for Gerald could tell the wretched suspicion which was beginning to grow in his companion.
“But you see there’s never a chance for it,” said Gerald. “There’s a small, prophetic voice in a man which tells him that he dare not make the try. He knows well enough that, if the girl is ready to marry, she’ll marry someone else, if she doesn’t marry him. It’s the home-making instinct in her that’s forcing her ahead. That’s all as clear as daylight, I think.”
“Good Lord!” groaned Tommy. “Suppose I should be wrong!”
“Come, come,” said Gerald. “I didn’t mean that you should take me seriously. I was merely talking about girls in general.”
“I wish I’d never heard you speak,” said Tommy bitterly.
“You’ll forget what I’ve said by tomorrow…by the time she’s smiled at you twice,” said Gerald.
“Not if I live a hundred years,” said Tommy. “And why not do it? As you say we test gold before we dig for it…and only ten days!”
He rubbed his hand across his forehead.
“You won’t do it,” said Gerald. “When it comes to the pinch, you won’t be able to get away.”
“What makes you so sure?” asked Tommy in anger.
He was boy enough to be furious at the thought that any one could see through him.
“Why, as I said before,” went on Gerald, fighting hard to retain his calmness and keep his voice from showing unmistakable signs of his excitement, “as I said before, there’s something inside of you which keeps whispering that I’m right!”
“By the Lord,” groaned Tommy, “I won’t admit it.”
“No, like the rest you’ll close your eyes to it.”
“But if at the end of ten days.…”
“That’s the point. If at the end of ten days, you came back and found her dancing with another man, smiling for him, laughing for him, working hard to make him happy, why….”
“I’d kill him!” breathed Tommy Vance.
“Of course you would,” said Gerald. “And that’s another reason you must not go away. It might lead to a manslaughter.”
Tommy tore open his shirt at the throat as though he were strangling, and yet the wind was humming down the valley, and the night air was chill and piercing. It was late November, and winter was already on the upper mountains, covering them with white hoods.
“You’re so cussed sure!” said Tommy Vance.
“Of course.”
“What gives you the right to talk so free and easy?”
“I’d wager a thousand dollars on it,” said Gerald.
“The devil you would!”
“I’m not asking you to take up the bet,” tempted Gerald.
“I could cover that amount.”
“But a thousand dollars and a girl is a good deal to put up.”
“Kern, I’ll make the bet!”
“Have you lost your wits, Tom Vance?”
It was too wonderfully good to be true, but now he must drive the young fellow so far that he could not draw back.
“I mean every word of it,” Tom said.
“I don’t
believe it! Think of what will go on in the girl’s head, Tom. She’s waiting for you now. She’d worry a good deal if she didn’t hear from you till the morning and then got only a little bit of a note:
Dear Kate:
Have to be away on business. No time to explain. Back in ten days.
Tom
“A note like that, my boy, would make her wild with anger. A girl doesn’t like to be treated lightly.”
“But I,” said Tommy Vance, “am going to send her just such a note.”
“Tush! That’s mere bravado even from you.”
“Kern, is my word good for my money?”
“Good as gold.”
“Then I’m gone tonight, and when I come back in ten days if she’s…she’s as much as cold to me, you win one thousand dollars!”
He turned away. Gerald caught him by the shoulder.
“Tom,” he said, “I’m not going to let you do this. I’d feel the burden of the responsibility. And mind you, my friend, if the girl is not as strong as you think she is, and as constant, it is simply the working of Mother Nature in her. Will you try to see that?”
“I’ve come to my conclusion, Kern, let me go!”
“It’s final?”
“Absolutely!”
“Ten whole days?”
“Ten whole days!”
“With never a word to her during all that time?”
“With never a word to her during all that time!”
The hand of Gerald dropped away. He stepped back with an almost solemn feeling of wonder passing over that crafty brain of his. How mysterious was the power of words which could enter the brain and so pervert the good sense of a man as the sense of Tommy Vance had been changed by his subtle suggestions!
“Well,” said he when he could control his voice, “you’re a brave fellow, Tom Vance!”
“Good night!” snapped Tommy over his shoulder.
“And good luck!” sang out Gerald.
He watched his late companion melt into the shadows, and then Gerald turned to saunter on his way. It was all like the working of a miracle. Without the lifting of his hand he had driven from Culver City the only man who stood between him and a pleasant visit with lovely Kate Maddern.