Claim Number One
Page 12
“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.”
“Thank you. The crowd will be thicker in there about ten o’clock tonight, and he’ll have more money on the table. It will be better for me and for my scheme to wait till about that time. It’s a long shot, partner; I’ll tell you that before you take it.”
“One in five?” asked the man, looking around cautiously, leaning forward, whispering.
“Not one in twenty,” discounted the doctor. “But if it goes, it goes as smooth as grease.”
The man stood considering it, looking as grave as a Scotch capitalist. Suddenly he jerked his head.
“I’ll take it!” said he.
Over a greasy supper, in a tent away out on the edge of things, they arranged the details of their plot against Hun Shanklin’s sure thing. What scheme the doctor had in mind he kept to himself, but he told his co-conspirator how to carry himself, and, with six small bills and some paper, he made up as handsome a gambler’s roll as could have been met with in all Comanche that night. Out of the middle of its alluring girth the corner of a five-dollar note showed, and around the outside Slavens bound a strip of the red handkerchief upon which the little man had mopped his sweating brow. It looked bungling enough for any sheep-herder’s hoard, and fat enough to tempt old Hun Shanklin to lead its possessor on.
After he had arranged it, the doctor pushed it across to his admiring companion.
“No,” said the little man, shaking his head; “you keep it. You may be a crook, but I’ll trust you with it. Anyhow, if you are a crook, I’m one too, I reckon.”
“Both of us, then, for tonight,” said the doctor, hooking the smoked goggles behind his ears.
* * *
CHAPTER X
HUN SHANKLIN’S COAT
Several sheep-herders, who had arrived late to dip into the vanishing diversions of Comanche, and a few railroad men to whom pay-day had just supplied a little more fuel to waste in its fires, were in Hun Shanklin’s tent when Dr. Slavens and his backer arrived.
Shanklin was running off about the same old line of talk, for he was more voluble than inventive, and never varied it much. It served just as well as a new lecture for every occasion, for the memory of suckers is even shorter than their judgment.
Gents were invited to step up and weigh the honesty of those dice, and gaze on the folly of an old one-eyed feller who had no more sense than to take such long chances. If anybody doubted that he took long chances, let that man step up and put down his money. Could he throw twenty-seven, or couldn’t he? That was the question, gents, and the odds were five to one that he could.
“I ain’t in this business for my health, gents,” he declared, pouring the dice out on his table, shaking them, and pouring them again. “I’m a gambler, and I’m here to make money, and make it as easy as I can; but if I’d been takin’ my pay in sheepskins since I’ve been in this man’s town I wouldn’t have enough of them to make me a coat. Live and let live is my motto, and if you can’t let ’em live let ’em die.
“Five times one dollar is five dollars, and five times five is twenty-five. Did any of you fellers ever make that much in a minute? Look at them dice. Take ’em in your hand; roll ’em on the table. Don’t they run true and straight? Twenty-seven comes up for you sometimes, and it comes up for me. But it comes up oftener for me than it does for you, because I’ve got it charmed. That’s m’ lucky number. I was borned on the 27th of Jannewarry, in Range 27, Township 27, twenty-seven mile from Turkey Trail, Montaney, where the wind blows circles and the water runs up-hill.
“You win, friend,” pushing stake and winnings to a sheep-herder who had ventured a dollar. “Five times one is five.”
Interest in the game began to show rising temperature; the infection of easy money was working through the bystanders’ sluggish blood. Shanklin kept the score of loss and gain a little in his own favor, as he was able to do from his years of practice, while still leaving the impression among the players that collectively they were cleaning him out. Some who felt sudden and sharp drains dropped out, but others took their places, eyes distended, cheeks flushed, money in hand.
Dr. Slavens and his backer made their way to the front. Slavens noted that Shanklin was making an extraordinary spread of money, which he had beside his hand in a little valise. It was craftily disposed in the mouth of the half-open bag, which seemed crammed to the hinges with it, making an alluring bait. The long, black revolver of Shanklin’s other days and nights lay there beside the bag asserting its large-caliber office of protection with a drowsy alligator look about it.
Slavens was as dirty and unwashed as the foulest in that crowd. His khaki coat bore a varnish of grease, his hat was without band or binding, and the growth of beard which covered his face like the bristles of a brush gave him the aspect of one who had long been the companion and warder of sheep upon the hills. With the added disguise of the smoked-glass goggles, common to travelers in that glaring, dusty land, it would have required one with a longer and more intimate acquaintance with him than Hun Shanklin could claim to pick him out of a crowd.
Slavens pulled out his roll and stood against the table, holding it in his hand with a loutish display of excitement and caution, as if unable to make up his mind whether to risk it on the game or not. When Shanklin saw it he began to direct his talk with a view to charming it out of the supposed sheep-herder’s hand.
With nervous fingers Slavens untied the strip of handkerchief, turned his back, and slipped off a dollar bill. This he put on the table with a cautious leaning forward and a suspicious hovering over it with the hand, playing the part so well that Shanklin’s sharp old eye was entirely deceived.
“You win, friend,” said Shanklin, pushing five dollars across the table. “This is like takin’ money away from a child.”
There was some tolling to be done on both sides in that game. Slavens turned his back again, with a true pastoral show of secrecy concerning his money, although he bungled it so that Shanklin could see him pulling the five-dollar note from the middle of his roll, as if searching for the next smallest bill. This he put on the table.
There was too much under his eye that throw for old Hun to let it get away. So the magic twenty-seven came rattling out of the box, and Hun raked over his winnings with doleful face and solemn shaking of the head, according to his way. He predicted feelingly that his luck could not last, and that the next time his number came up there would be only two dollars on the table.
From the little pile of one-dollar bills under his hand–the five which he had won and the one that he had first staked–the doctor counted five slowly, and then counted it over again, to make sure. He won.
The others were watching him as he pushed the twenty-five dollars out in the middle of the table with a defiant snort. He crouched over his stake with guarding mien as old Hun took up
the box and shook the dice. They fell near his hand, scattering a little, rolling over to the edge of his money as they settled down. He had won again.
This extraordinary luck seemed to turn the bettor’s head. He spread out his fingers, leaning lower over his stake, as if to prevent its being swept away by violence or mistake.
“I won, I tell you! I won!” said he.
“You won, friend,” said Hun, counting out the money to him, a look of triumph in his greedy little eye. For, according to all the signs, the poison was so deep in the supposed sheep-herder’s blood that nothing but the loss of all his hoard would cool it again.
Slavens nervously counted down twenty-five dollars again, keeping the remainder of his winnings in his hand, as if ready to take chance on the jump.
A man must have it given to him both ways in order to key him up to the right place, Hun Shanklin knew. All winning would no more do than all loss. So this time the loaded dice were switched into the box, and the charmed number came out again.
“Hold on! Hold on!” protested the bettor as Shanklin started to sweep the money away with one hand and gather in his tricky dice with the other. For Hun never left those dice any longer on the board than necessary.
Slavens threw himself forward on the table, his elbows spread, scrutinizing the dice as if he had not yet figured the total.
“Yes; you win this time,” said he grudgingly, removing his hand from his stake, but dropping the money which he clutched in his fist at the same time.
With fatherly kindness Shanklin admonished him to hold on to his money, and helped him pick it up. And, sharp as his old eye was, he did not see that one of his precious dice, hidden under a bill, had changed places with another, which had waited that moment in the doctor’s hand.
The others around the table had given the game over to the amazing sheep-herder who seemed to have so much cash. They stood by, gaping and exclaiming, growing hotter and hotter with the fever all the time themselves, licking their dry lips, feeling of their money, getting ready to pitch into it as soon as the film of chance had thickened a little on their eyes, shutting out reason entirely.
Slavens straightened up and gave his backer two gentle prods in the ribs, which was the signal agreed upon to let the other know that the scheme was in working order, and that something was due to happen. He counted down one hundred dollars and stood expectant, while Shanklin held his hand over the mouth of the dicebox and looked at him with contemptuous reproach.
“No, you don’t! No, you don’t!” said Hun. “If you want to play this man’s game you got to shove up some money of your own. That money’s my money, and you’ve been shovin’ it on and draggin’ it off so much I’m afraid you’ll wear it out if you keep on.
“It’s mine, I tell you! Every cent of it’s mine! If you got any of your own put it up, and then I’ll roll ’em. If you got a hundred to pile on top of that, or five hundred, or ten hundred, come on and pile it up. Then I’ll roll ’em. But I ain’t a goin’ to stand here and speculate in my own money all night!”
So there they were, caught in a blind cañon when they thought they were coming into the clear. That was an unlooked-for and unprepared-for turn that Shanklin had given to their plans. Right when they had him unsuspectingly loaded up so he could no more throw twenty-seven than he could fly, except by the tremendously long chance that the good die would fall right to make up the count, he sat down on his hind legs and balked.
Slavens was at the end of his rope. There appeared nothing for it but to withdraw the stake and sneak off with only half of his backer’s loss of the afternoon retrieved. He was reaching out his hand to pull the money away, when the little fellow with whiskers caught his arm.
Slavens thought he read a signal in the touch, and turned as if to consult his roll again. As he did so the little man thrust a comfortable wad of bills into his hand, and Slavens faced the table, counting down five one-hundred-dollar bills.
Hun Shanklin’s eye was burning the backs of those aristocrats of the currency as he lifted his box.
“That’s more like it,” he commended. “I can play with a gentleman that carries them things around with him all night, even if I lose at every throw.”
“Hold on!” said the doctor as Hun was tilting the box to throw. “Cover that money before you throw. I’ve got six hundred dollars down there, and I want you to count out three thousand by the side of it.”
“Well, I’ve got the money, friend, if that’s what you doubt,” said Shanklin, with a lofty air of the injured gentleman.
He drew a sheaf of bills from the valise and, in the stillness of awe which had come over the crowd, counted down the required amount.
“I’ve won fortunes, gentlemen, and I’ve lost ’em,” said Shanklin, taking up the box again. “Keep your eye on the dice.”
He was so certain of what would come out of the box that he reached for the money before the dice had settled, ready to sweep it away. But a change came over his face, as of sudden pain, when he saw the result of the throw, and with a little dry snort his hand shot out toward the revolver which lay beside his valise.
The little man with whiskers, admirably cool, got there first. Hun Shanklin was looking into the end of his own gun, and unloading, through the vent of his ugly, flat mouth, the accumulated venom of his life. He was caught in his own trap by a sharper man than himself, a being that up to that minute he had believed the world could not produce.
Dr. Slavens quickly gathered the money. The others around the table, blazing now in their desire to get a division of fortune’s favors, put down their bets and called loudly for the gamekeeper to cover them.
“Game’s closed,” Shanklin announced, shutting up his valise, into which he had tossed both dice and box.
He made a move as if to part the tent-wall behind him.
“Hold on!” said the doctor, snatching off his goggles and pushing up the brim of his hat. “I’ve got another score to settle with you, Shanklin. Do you know me now?”
Shanklin didn’t wait to reply. He dropped to his knees just as Slavens reached for him, catching the collar of his coat. In an instant the gambler was gone, but his coat was in Dr. Slavens’ hand, a circumstance from which the assembled men drew a great deal of merriment.
The chief of police, remiss in his high duty, should have been there to sustain Shanklin’s hand, according to their gentlemanly agreement when the partnership was formed. He arrived too late. Shanklin was gone, and from the turmoil in the tent the chief concluded that he had trimmed somebody in his old-fashioned, comfortable way. So his duty, as he saw it in that moment, lay in clearing them out and dispersing them, and turning deaf ears to all squeals from the shorn and skinned.
Dr. Slavens and his friend had nothing to linger for. They were the first to leave, the doctor carrying Shanklin’s coat under his arm, the pockets of his own greasy makeshift bulging with more money than he ever had felt the touch of before. As they hurried along the dark street away from the scene of their triumph, the little man with fiery whiskers did the talking.
“Mackenzie is my name,” said he, all of the suspicion gone out of him, deep, feeling admiration in its place, “and if you was to happen up to southern Montana you’d find me pretty well known. I’ve got fifty thousand sheep on the range up there, average four dollars a head, and I’d hand half of ’em over to you right now if you’d show me how you turned that trick. That was the slickest thing I ever saw!”
“It wouldn’t do you any good at all to know how it was done,” said Slavens, “for it was a trick for the occasion and the man we worked it on. The thing for us to do is to go to some decent, quiet place and divide this money.”
“Give me my two hundred and the stake,” said Mackenzie, “and keep the rest. I don’t need money; I’ve got two national banks full of it up there in Montana now.”
“Lord knows I need it!” said the doctor, beginning to sweat over the nearness to visions which he once believed he should never overhaul.
“I don’t know who you are or where you came from,” said Mackenzie, “but you’re not a crook, anyhow. That money’s yours; you got it out of him as beautiful as I ever saw a man skinned in my day. But if you don’t want to tip it off, that’s your business.”
“It was a chance,” said the doctor, recalling a night beside the river and the words of Agnes when she spoke of that theme, “and I had the sense and the courage for once to take it.”
In the café-tent where they had taken their supper they sat with a stew of canned oysters between them, and made the division of the money which the lost die had won. Mackenzie would accept no more than the two hundred dollars which he had lost on Shanklin’s game, together with the five hundred and ten advanced in the hope of regaining it.
It was near midnight when they parted, Mackenzie to seek his lodging-place, Dr. Slavens to make the rounds of the stores in the hope of finding one open in which he could buy a new outfit of clothing. They were all closed and dark. The best that he could do toward improving his outcast appearance was to get shaved. This done, he found lodging in a place where he could have an apartment to himself, and even an oil-lamp to light him to his rest.
Sitting there on the side of his bed, he explored the pockets of Hun Shanklin’s coat. There were a number of business cards, advertising various concerns in Comanche, which Shanklin had used for recording his memoranda; two telegrams, and a printed page of paper, folded into small space. There was nothing more.
The paper was an extra edition of The Chieftain, such as the doctor had grown sadly familiar with on the day of the drawing. With a return of the heartsickness which he had felt that day, he unfolded it far enough to see the date. It was the day of the drawing. He dropped the half-folded sheet to the floor and took up the telegrams.
One, dated the day before, was from Meander. The other was evidently Shanklin’s reply, which perhaps had not been filed, or perhaps was a copy. The first read: