Claim Number One Part 18

But he couldn't tell who went on the train, the stage, or the wagon. It was none of his business, he said. They paid their bill; that was all he knew, or cared.

"May I take a look around the tent to see if they left any written word for me there?" the doctor requested.

"Go on," said the woman, a little softening of sympathy coming into her hard eyes.

Dr. Slavens went back to the tent, which stood as it had been left that morning when the last of the party went away. The canvas under which their table stood stretched there hospitably still, and the stove with the morning's ashes cold upon its little hearth. Inside, the cots were all in place, but there was not a line of writing from any friendly hand to tell him where they had gone, or where his property had been left.

He walked toward the business part of the town and turned down Main Street, considering with himself what turn to make next. His head bent in meditation, he pa.s.sed along lamely, his hands in the pockets of his torn trousers, where there was nothing, not even the thickness of a dime, to cramp his finger-room. Pausing in the aimless way of one who has no unfinished business ahead of him, he looked around, marking the changes which had come upon the street during those few days.

The litter of broken camp was on every hand; broken barrels, piles of boxes, scattered straw, bottles sown as thickly upon the ground as if someone had planted them there in the expectation of reaping a harvest of malt liquors and ardent spirits. Here the depression of a few inches marked where a tent had stood, the earth where the walls had protected it from the beating feet showing a little higher all around; there in the soft ground was the mark of a bar, the vapors of spilled liquors rising sharply in the sun.

Bands of boys and camp-dregs, of whom he might have been one from his appearance, sc.r.a.ped and dug among the debris, searching for what might have been dropped from careless or drunken hands and trampled out of sight. That they were rewarded frequently was attested by the sharp exclamations and triumphant cries.

Across from where he stood was the site of a large place, its littered leavings either already worked over or not yet touched. No one scratched and peered among its trash-heaps or clawed over its reeking straw. Dr.

Slavens took possession of the place, turning the loose earth and heaped acc.u.mulations with his feet as he rooted around like a swine. It must have been worked over and exhausted, he concluded, for it turned no glint of silver to the sun. Persisting, he worked across the s.p.a.ce which the tent had covered, and sat down on a box to rest.

The sun was low; the tops of two tall, round tents across the way came between it and his eyes when he sat down. That was the luck of some people, thought he, to arrive too late. The pay-dirt was all worked out; the pasturage was cropped; the dry sage was all gathered and burned.

No matter. A man had but one moment of life to call his own, wrote Marcus Aurelius. The moment just pa.s.sed into the score of time's count, the moment which the hand of the clock trembles over, a hair's breadth yet to go--these are no man's to claim. One is gone forever; the other may mark the pa.s.sing of his soul. Only this moment, this throb of the heart, this half-drawn breath, is a living man's to claim. The beggar has it; the monarch can command no more. Poor as he was, Dr. Slavens thought, smiling as he worked his foot, into the trampled dust, he was as rich in life's allotment as the best.

The sole of his cut and broken shoe struck some little thing which resisted, then turned up white beneath his eye. Broken porcelain, or bone fragment, it appeared. He would have pushed it aside with his toe; but just then it turned, showing the marking of a die.

Here was a whimsical turn of circ.u.mstance, thought he. An outcast die for a broken man, recalling by its presence the high games of chance which both of them had played in their day and lost, perhaps. It was a little, round-cornered die, its spots marked deep and plain. As it lay in his hand it brought reminiscences of Hun Shanklin, for it was of his pattern of dice, and his size, convenient for hiding between the fingers of his deceptive hand.

Dr. Slavens rolled it on the box beside him. It seemed a true and honest die, for it came up now an ace, now trey; now six, now deuce. He rolled it, rolled it, thinking of Hun Shanklin and Hun's long, loose-skinned hand.

For a place of wiles, such as Comanche had been and doubtless was still, it was a very honest little die, indeed. What use would anybody have for it there? he wondered. The memory of what he had seen dice do there moved him to smile. Then the recollection of what had stood on that spot came to him; the big tent, with the living pictures and variety show, and Hun Shanklin's crescent table over against the wall.

That must have been the very spot of its location, with the divided wall of the tent back of him, through which he had disappeared on the night that Walker lost his money and Shanklin dropped his dice. Of course.

That was the explanation. The little cube in Slavens' palm was one of Shanklin's honest dice, with which he tolled on the suckers. He had lost one of them in his precipitate retreat.

Dr. Slavens put the cube in his pocket and got up, turning the debris of the camp again with his foot, watching for the gleam of silver. As he worked, a tubby man with whiskers turned out of the thin stream of traffic which pa.s.sed through the street and sat on one of the boxes near at hand. He sat there wiping his face, which was as red and sweat-drenched as if he had just finished a race, holding his hat in his hand, exclaiming and talking to himself.

He was so self-centered in his overflowing indignation that he did not notice the man kicking among the rubbish just a few feet away. Presently the little man drew out a roll of money and counted it on his knee, to look up when he had finished, and shake his fist at the tent which stood shoulder-to-shoulder by the police station. The gesture was accompanied by maledictions upon crooks and robbers, and the force of his expressions made necessary the use of the handkerchief again. This the man took from his hat, which he held in his hand ready to receive it again like a dish, and scrubbed his fiery face, set over with fiery whiskers and adorned with a fiery nose. When he had cooled himself a bit he sat watching the doctor at his labor, lifting his eyebrows every time he blinked.

"Lost something?" he asked.

"Yes," replied the doctor, kicking away, not even looking at his questioner.

"Well, if you dropped it out of your hand or through a hole in your pocket you're lucky!" said the little man, shaking his fist at the tent where his wrath appeared to center. "This place is full of crooks.

They'll rob you when you're asleep and they'll skin you when you're awake, with both eyes open."

The doctor had nothing to add to this, and no comment to append. The man on the box put on his hat, with a corner of handkerchief dangling from it over his ear.

"You live here?" he inquired.

"Yes; right now I do," the doctor replied.

"Well, do you know anything about a long, lean, one-eyed man that runs a dice-game over there in that tent?"

"I've heard of him," said the doctor.

"Well, he skinned me out of two hundred dollars a little while ago, blast his gizzard!"

"You're not the first one, and it's not likely that you'll be the last,"

the doctor a.s.sured him, drawing a little nearer and studying the victim from beneath his hanging hat-brim.

"No; maybe not," snapped the other. "But I'll even up with him before I go away from here."

"Would you be willing to risk ten dollars more on a chance to get it back?" asked the doctor.

"Show me the man who can tell me how to do it, and watch me," bristled the victim.

"I know that man, and I know his scheme," said the doctor, "and I've got one that will beat it."

The whiskered man put his hand into the pocket where the remainder of his roll was stored, and looked at the battered stranger with a disfavoring scowl.

"How do I know you ain't another crook?" he asked.

"You don't know, and maybe I am a crook in a small way. I'm in hard luck right now."

"What's your scheme?"

"That's my capital," the doctor told him. "If I had a few dollars I'd put it through without splitting with anybody; but I haven't a cent.

I've been kicking this straw and trash around here for the last hour in the hope of turning up a dime. I'll say this to you: I'll undertake to recover your two hundred dollars for you if you'll put up ten. If I get it back, then you are to give me twenty-five of it, and if I win more I'm to keep all above the two hundred. And you can hold on to your ten dollars till we stand up to the table, and then you can hold to my coat.

I can't get away with it, but I don't guarantee, you understand, that I'll win."

The little man was thoughtful a spell. When he looked up there was the glitter of hope in his sharp scrutiny.

"It'd take a crook to beat that old man's game," said he, "and maybe you can do it. As long as I can hold on to the money I don't see how I stand to lose it, and I've got a notion to go you."

"Suit yourself," said the doctor, turning again to his exploration of the straw.

"Ain't much in that," commented the gambler's victim, watching him with puzzled face.

No comment from the searching man.

"You're a funny feller, anyhow, and I got a notion to take you up.

Crook, heh?"

"Oh, a sort of a tin-horn," answered the doctor apparently indifferent about the whole matter.

Slavens was working farther away now, so the man left his place on the box to draw within the range of confidential conversation.

"If I was to put up the ten, would you be willing to go over there now and put that scheme of yours in motion?" he asked.

"No; not now. There would be some preliminaries. In the first place, that old man knows me, although he might not spot me at the first look in this rig. I'd have to get a pair of goggles to hide my eyes. And then there would be supper."

"Sure," agreed the little man. "I was going to ask you about that, anyhow."