Gold Part 37

"What of that?" I asked; "drowned bodies usually float."

"There's no miner in these diggings but has gold enough in his belt to sink him. If a man floats, he's been robbed, and you can tie to that reasoning. And the fellows are all well mounted, and given to mysterious disappearances."

"In other words," broke in the doctor, "they are an organized band of cut-throats and highway robbers making this honest camp a headquarters."

"Pshaw, Doctor," said Randall, "that's by no means certain."

"It's certain enough," insisted the doctor.

"I should think the miners would drive them out," I said.

"Drive them out!" cried the doctor bitterly; "they're too busy, and their own toes haven't been trodden on, and they're too willing to let well enough alone so as not to be interrupted in their confounded digging for gold."

"They're not organized and they are quite justly unwilling to get in a row with that gang when they know they'd be killed," stated Randall quietly. "They're getting on 'well enough,' and they'll continue to be run by this lot of desperadoes until something desperate happens. They want to be let alone."

The doctor recovered his equanimity with an effort.

"They present the curious spectacle," said he thoughtfully, "of the individual man in a new untrammelled liberty trying to escape his moral obligations to society. He escapes them for a while, but they are there; and in the end he must pay in violence."

Randall laughed and arose.

"If the doctor is going to begin that sort of thing, I'm going," said he.

Our visitors took their departure.

"Oh, Doctor, one moment!" I called; then, as he returned. "Tell me, who and what is Danny Randall?"

"Danny Randall," said the doctor, a humorous twinkle coming into his eyes, "is a gentleman of fortune."

"And now we know a lot more than we did before!" said Johnny, as we watched the receding figures.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE FIGHT

We ate a very silent supper, washed our dishes methodically, and walked up to town. The Bella Union was the largest of the three gambling houses--a log and canvas structure some forty feet long by perhaps twenty wide. A bar extended across one end, and the gaming tables were arranged down the middle. A dozen oil lamps with reflectors furnished illumination.

All five tables were doing a brisk business; when we paused at the door for a preliminary survey, the bar was lined with drinkers, and groups of twos and threes were slowly sauntering here and there or conversing at the tops of their voices with many guffaws. The air was thick with tobacco smoke. Johnny stepped just inside the door, moved sideways, and so stood with his back to the wall. His keen eyes went from group to group slowly, resting for a moment in turn on each of the five impa.s.sive gamblers and their lookouts, on the two barkeepers, and then one by one on the men with whom the place was crowded. Following his, my glance recognized at a corner of the bar Danny Randall with five rough-looking miners. He caught my eye and nodded. No one else appeared to notice us, though I imagined the noise of the place sank and rose again at the first moment of our entrance.

"Jim," said Johnny to me quietly, "there's Danny Randall at the other end of the room. Go join him. I want you to leave me to play my own game."

I started to object.

"Please do as I say," insisted Johnny. "I can take care of myself unless there's a general row. In that case all my friends are better together."

Without further protest I left him, and edged my way to the little group at the end of the bar. Randall nodded to me as I came up, and motioned to the barkeeper to set me out a gla.s.s, but said nothing. Ours was the only lot away from the gaming tables not talking. We sipped our drink and watched Johnny.

After surveying coolly the room, Johnny advanced to the farther of the gambling tables, and began to play. His back was toward the entrance.

The game was roulette, and Johnny tossed down his bets methodically, studying with apparent absorption each s.h.i.+ft of the wheel. To all appearance he was intent on the game, and nothing else; and he talked and laughed with his neighbours and the dealer as though his spirit were quite carefree.

For ten minutes we watched. Then a huge figure appeared in the blackness of the doorway, slipped through, and instantly to one side, so that his back was to the wall. Scar-face Charley had arrived.

He surveyed the place as we had done, almost instantly caught sight of Johnny, and immediately began to make his way across the room through the crowds of loungers. Johnny was laying a bet, bending over the table, joking with the impa.s.sive dealer, his back turned to the door, totally oblivious of his enemy's approach. I started forward, instantly realized the hopelessness of either getting quickly through that crowd or of making myself heard, and leaned back, clutching the rail with both hands. Johnny was hesitating, his hand hovering uncertainly above the marked squares of the layout, in doubt exactly where to bet. Scar-face Charley shouldered his way through the loungers and reached the clear s.p.a.ce immediately behind his unconscious victim. He stopped for an instant, squared his shoulders, and took one step forward. Johnny dropped his chips on the felt layout, contemplated his choice an instant--and suddenly whirled on his heel in a lightning about-face.

Although momentarily startled by this unexpected evidence that Johnny was not so far off guard as he had seemed, the desperado's hand dropped swiftly to the b.u.t.t of his pistol. At the same instant Johnny's arm snapped forward in the familiar motion of drawing from the sleeve. The motion started clean and smooth, but half through, caught, dragged, halted. I gasped aloud, but had time for no more than that; Scar-face Charley's revolver was already on the leap. Then at last Johnny's derringer appeared, apparently as the result of a desperate effort.

Almost with the motion, it barked, and the big man whirled to the floor, his pistol, already at half raise, clattering away. The whole episode from the beginning occupied the s.p.a.ce of two eye-winks. Probably no one but myself and Danny Randall could have caught the slight hitch in Johnny's draw; and indeed I doubt if anybody saw whence he had s.n.a.t.c.hed the derringer.

A complete silence fell. It could have lasted only an instant; but Johnny seized that instant.

"Has this man any friends here?" he asked clearly.

His head was back, and his snapping black eyes seemed to see everywhere at once.

No one answered or stirred. Johnny held them for perhaps ten seconds, then deliberately turned back to the table.

"That's my bet on the _even_," said he. "Let her roll!"

The gambler lifted his face, white in the brilliant illumination directly over his head, and I thought to catch a flicker of something like admiration in his pa.s.sionless eyes. Then with his left hand he spun the wheel.

The soft, dull whir and tiny clicking of the ball as it rebounded from the metal grooves struck across the tense stillness. As though this was the releasing signal, a roar of activity burst forth. Men all talked at once. The other tables and the bar were deserted, and everybody crowded down toward the lower end of the room. Danny Randall and his friends rushed determinedly to the centre of disturbance. Some men were carrying out Scar-face Charley. Others were talking excitedly. A little clear s.p.a.ce surrounded the roulette table, at which, as may be imagined, Johnny was now the only player. Quite methodically he laid three more bets.

"I think that's enough for now," he told the dealer pleasantly, and turned away.

"Hullo! Randall! hullo! Frank!" he greeted us. "I've just won three bets straight. Let's have a drink. Bring your friends," he told Randall.

We turned toward the bar and way was instantly made for us. Johnny poured himself a big drink of whiskey. A number of curious men, mere boys most of them, had crowded close after us, and were standing staring at Johnny with a curiosity they made slight attempt to conceal. Johnny suddenly turned to them, holding high his whiskey in a hand as steady as a rock.

"Here's to crime, boys!" he said, and drank it down at a gulp. Then he stood staring them uncomprisingly in the face, until they had slunk away. He called for and drank another whiskey, then abruptly moved toward the door.

"I think I'll go turn in," said he.

At the door he stopped.

"Good-night," he said to Randall and his friends, who had followed us.

"No, I am obliged to you," he replied to a suggestion, "but I need no escort," and he said it so firmly that all but Randall went back.

"I'm going to your camp with you, whether you need an escort or not,"

said the latter.

Without a word Johnny walked away down the street, very straight. We hurried to catch up with him; and just as we did so he collapsed to the ground and was suddenly and violently sick. As I helped him to his feet, I could feel that his arm was trembling violently.

"Lord, fellows! I'm ashamed," he gasped a little hysterically. "I didn't know I had so little nerve!"

"Nerve!" suddenly roared Danny Randall; "confound your confounded impudence! If I ever hear you say another word like that, I'll put a head on you, if it's the last act of my life! You're the gamest little chicken in this roost, and I'll make you beg like a hound if you say you aren't!"