The U. P. Trail Part 63

Moments pa.s.sed. The gambling went on. The players spoke low; the spectators were silent. Discordant sounds from outside disturbed the quiet.

Allie stared fixedly at the door. Presently it opened. Ancliffe entered with several men, all quick in movement, alert of eye. But Neale and Larry King were not among them. Allie's heart sank like lead. The revulsion of feeling, the disappointment, was sickening. She saw Ancliffe shake his head, and divined in the action that he had not been able to find the friends Hough wanted particularly. Then Allie felt the incredible strangeness of being glad that Neale was not to find her there--that Larry was not to throw his guns on Durade's crowd. There might be a chance of her being liberated without violence.

This reaction left her weak and dazed for a while. Still she heard the low voices of the gamesters, the slap of cards and clink of gold. Her wits had gone from her ever since the mention of Neale. She floundered in a whirl of thoughts and fears until gradually she recovered self-possession. Whatever instinct or love or spirit had guided her had done so rightly. She had felt Neale's presence in Benton. It was stingingly sweet to realize that. Her heart swelled with pangs of fullest measure. Surely he again believed her dead. Soon he would come upon her--face to face--somewhere. He would learn she was alive--unharmed--true to him with all her soul. Indians, renegade Spaniards, Benton with its terrors, a host of EVIL men, not these nor anything else could keep her from Neale forever. She had believed that always, but never as now, in the clearness of this beautiful spiritual insight. Behind her belief was something unfathomable and great. Not the movement of progress as typified by those men who had dreamed of the railroad, nor the spirit of the unconquerable engineers as typified by Neale, nor the wildness of wild youth like Larry King, nor the heroic labor and simplicity and sacrifice of common men, nor the inconceivable pa.s.sion of these gamblers for gold, nor the mystery hidden in the mad laughter of these fallen women, strange and sad on the night wind--not any of these things nor all of them, wonderful and incalculable as they were, loomed so great as the spirit that upheld Allie Lee.

When she raised her head again the gambling scene had changed. Only three men played--Hough, Durade, and another. And even as Allie looked this third player threw his cards into the deck and with silent gesture rose from the table to take a position with the other black-garbed gamblers standing behind Hough. The blackness of their attire contrasted strongly with the whiteness of their faces. They had lost gold, which fact meant little to them. But there was something big and significant in their presence behind Hough. Gamblers leagued against a crooked gambling-h.e.l.l! Durade had lost a fortune, yet not all his fortune. He seemed a haggard, flaming-eyed wreck of the once debonair Durade. His hair was wet and dishevelled, his collar was open, his hand wavered.

Blood trickled down from his lower lip. He saw nothing except the gold, the cards, and that steel-nerved, gray-faced, implacable Hough. Behind him lined up his gang, nervous, strained, frenzied, with eyes on the gold--hate-filled, murderous eyes.

Allie slipped into her room, leaving the door ajar so she could peep out, and there she paced the floor, waiting, listening for what she dared not watch. The gambler Hough would win all that Durade had, and then stake it against her. That was what Allie believed. She had no doubts of Hough's winning her, too, but she doubted if he could take her away. There would be a fight. And if there was a fight, then that must be the end of Durade. For this gambler, Hough, with his unshakable nerve, his piercing eyes, his wonderful white hands, swift as light--he would at the slightest provocation kill Durade.

Suddenly Allie was arrested by a loud, long suspiration--a heave of heavy breaths in the room of the gamblers. A chair sc.r.a.ped, noisily breaking the silence, which instantly clamped down again.

"Durade, you're done!" It was the cold, ringing voice of Hough.

Allie ran to the door, peeped through the crack. Durade sat there like a wild beast bound. Hough stood erect over a huge golden pile on the table. The others seemed stiff in their tracks.

"There's a fortune here," went on Hough, indicating the gold. "All I had--all our gentlemen opponents had--all YOU had... I have won it all!"

Durade's eyes seemed glued to that dully glistening heap. He could not even look up at the coldly pa.s.sionate Hough.

"All! All!" echoed Durade.

Then Hough, like a striking hawk, bent toward the Spaniard. "Durade, have you anything more to bet?"

Durade was the only man who moved. Slowly he arose, shaking in every limb, and not till he became erect did he unrivet his eyes from that yellow heap on the table.

"Senor--do you--mock me?" he gasped, hoa.r.s.ely.

"I offer you my winnings--ALL--FOR THE GIRL YOU HAVE HERE!"

"You are crazy!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Spaniard.

"Certainly... But hurry! Do you accept?"

"Senor, I would not sell that girl for all the gold of the Indies,"

replied Durade, instantly. No vacillation--no indecision in him here.

Hough's offer held no lure for this Spaniard who had committed many crimes for gold.

"BUT YOU'LL GAMBLE HER!" a.s.serted Hough, and now indeed his words were mockery. In one splendid gesture he swept his winnings into the middle of the table, and the gold gave out a ringing clash. As a gambler he read the soul of his opponent.

Durade's jaw worked convulsively, as if he had difficulty in holding it firm enough for utterance. What he would not sell for any price he would risk on a gambler's strange faith in chance.

"All my winnings against this girl," went on Hough, relentlessly. Scorn and a taunting dare and an insidious persuasion mingled with the pa.s.sion of his offer. He knew how to inflame. Durade, as a gambler, was a weakling in the grasp of a giant. "Come!... Do you accept?"

Durade's body leaped, as if an irresistible current had been shot into it.

"Si, Senor!" he cried, with power and joy in his voice. In that moment, no doubt the greatest in his life of gambling, he unconsciously went back to the use of his mother tongue.

Actuated by one impulse, Hough and Durade sat down at the table. The others crowded around. Fresno lurched close, with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

"I was onto Hough," he said to his nearest ally. "It's the girl he's after!"

The gamblers cut the cards for who should deal. Hough won. For him victory seemed to exist in the suspense of the very silence, in the charged atmosphere of the room. He began to shuffle the cards. His hands were white, shapely, perfect, like a woman's, and yet not beautiful.

The spirit, the power, the ruthless nature in them had no relation to beauty. How marvelously swift they moved--too swift for the gaze to follow. And the incomparable dexterity with which he manipulated the cards gave forth the suggestion as to what he could do with them. In those gleaming hands, in the flying cards, in the whole intenseness of the gambler there showed the power and the intent to win. The crooked Durade had met his match, a match who toyed with him. If there were an element of chance in this short game it was that of the uncertainty of life, not of Durade's chance to win. He had no chance. No eye, no hand could have justly detected Hough in the slightest deviation from honesty. Yet all about the man in that tense moment proved what a gambler really was.

Durade called in a whisper for two cards, and he received them with trembling fingers. Terrible hope and exultation transformed his face.

"I'll take three," said Hough, calmly. With deliberate care and slowness, in strange contrast to his former motions, he took, one by one, three cards from the deck. Then he looked at them, and just as calmly dropped all his cards, face up, on the table, disclosing what he knew to be an unbeatable hand.

Durade stared. A thick cry escaped him.

Swiftly Hough rose. "Durade, I have won." Then he turned to his friends.

"Gentlemen, please pocket this gold."

With that he stepped to Allie's door. He saw her peering out. "Come, Miss Lee," he said.

Allie stepped out, trembling and unsteady on her feet.

The Spaniard now seemed compelled to look up from the gold Hough's comrades were pocketing. When he saw Allie another slow and remarkable transformation came over him. At first he started slightly at Hough's hand on Allie's arm. The radiance of his strange pa.s.sion for gold, that had put a leaping glory into his haggard face, faded into a dark and mounting surprise. A blaze burned away the shadows. His eyes betrayed an unsupportable sense of loss and the spirit that repudiated it. For a single instant he was magnificent--and perhaps in that instant race and blood spoke; then, with bewildering suddenness, surely with the suddenness of a memory, he became a black, dripping-faced victim of unutterable and unquenchable hate.

Allie recoiled in the divination that Durade saw her mother in her. No memory, no love, no gold, no wager, could ever thwart the Spaniard.

"Senor, you tricked me!" he whispered.

"I beat you at your own game," said Hough. "My friends and your men heard the stake--saw the game."

"Senor, I would not--bet--that girl--for any stake!"

"You have LOST her... Let me warn you, Durade. Be careful, once in your life!... You're welcome to what gold is left there."

Durade shoved back the gold so fiercely that he upset the table, and its contents jangled on the floor. The spill and the crash of a scattered fortune released Durade's men from their motionless suspense. They began to pick up the coins.

The Spaniard was halted by the gleam of a derringer in Hough's hand.

Hissing like a snake, Durade stood still, momentarily held back by a fear that quickly gave place to insane rage.

"Shoot him!" said Ancliffe, with a coolness which proved his foresight.

One of Hough's friends swung a cane, smas.h.i.+ng a lamp; then with like swift action he broke the other lamp, instantly plunging the room into darkness. This appeared to be the signal for Durade's men to break loose into a mad scramble for the gold. Durade began to scream and rush forward.

Allie felt herself drawn backward, along the wall, through her door.

It was not so dark in there. She distinguished Hough and Ancliffe. The latter closed the door. Hough whispered to Allie, though the din in the other room made such caution needless.

"Can we get out this way?" he asked.

"There's a window," replied Allie.

"Ancliffe, open it and get her out. I'll stop Durade if he comes in.

Hurry!"