by Grey, Zane
Allie always entered that private den of Durade's with eyes cast down. She had been scorched too often by the glances of men. As she went in this time she felt the presence of gamblers, but they were quieter than those to whom she had become accustomed. Durade ordered her to fetch drinks, then he went on talking, rapidly, in excitement, elated, boastful, almost gay.
Allie did not look up. As she carried the tray to the large table she heard a man whisper low: "By jove! ... Hough, that's the girl!"
Then she heard a slight, quick intake of breath, and the exclamation, "Good
God!"
Both voices thrilled Allie. The former seemed the low, well- modulated, refined, and drawling speech of an Englishman; the latter was keen, quick, soft, and full of genuine emotion. Allie returned to her chair by the sideboard before she ventured to look up. Durade was playing cards with four men, three of whom were black-garbed, after the manner of professional gamblers. The other player wore gray, and a hat of unusual shape, with wide, loose, cloth band. He removed his hat as he caught Allie's glance, and she associated the act with the fact of her presence. She thought that this must be the man whose voice had proclaimed him
English. He had a fair face, lined and shadowed and dissipated, with tired blue eyes and a blond mustache that failed to altogether hide a well-shaped mouth. It was the kindest and saddest face Allie had ever seen there. She read its story.
In her extremity she had acquired a melancholy wisdom in the judgment of the faces of the men drifting through Durade's hall. What Allie had heard in this
Englishman's voice she saw in his features. He did not look at her again. He played cards wearily, carelessly, indifferently, with his mind plainly on something else.
"Ancliffe, how many cards?" called one of the black-garbed men.
The Englishman threw down his cards. "None," he said.
The game was interrupted by a commotion in the adjoining room, which was the public gambling-hall of Durade's establishment.
"Another fight!" exclaimed Durade, impatiently. "And only Mull and Fresno showed up to-day."
Harsh voices and heavy stamps were followed by a pistol-shot. Durade hurriedly arose.
"Gentlemen, excuse me," he said, and went out. One of the gamblers also left the room, and another crossed it to peep through the door.
This left the Englishman sitting at the table with the last gambler, whose back was turned toward Allie. She saw the Englishman lean forward to speak. Then the gambler arose and, turning, came directly toward her.
"My name is Place Hough," he said, speaking rapidly and low. "I am a gambler; but gentleman. I've heard strange rumors about you, and now I see for myself. Are you Allie Lee?"
Allie's heart seemed to come to her throat. She shook all over, and she gazed with piercing intensity at the man. When he had arisen from the table he had appeared the same black-garbed, hard-faced gambler as any of the others. But looked at closely, he was different. Underneath the cold, expressionless face worked something mobile and soft. His eyes were of crystal clearness and remarkable for a penetrating power. They shone with wonder, curiosity, sympathy.
Allie instinctively trusted the voice and then consciously trusted the man. "Oh, sir, I am; distressed; ill from fright!" she faltered. "If I only dared; "
"You dare tell me," he interrupted, swiftly. "Be quick. Are you here willingly with this man?"
"Oh no!"
"What then?"
"Oh, sir; you do not think; I; "
"I knew you were good, innocent; the moment I laid eyes on you, ... Who are you?"
"Allie Lee. My father is Allison Lee."
"Whew!" The gambler whistled softly and, turning, glanced at the door, then beckoned Ancliffe. The Englishman arose. In the adjoining rooms sounds of strife were abating.
"Ancliffe, this girl is Allie Lee; daughter of Allison Lee; a big man of the
U. P. R. ... Something terribly wrong here." And he whispered to Ancliffe.
Allie became aware of the Englishman's scrutiny, doubtful, sad, yet kind and curious. Indeed these men had heard of her.
"Hough, you must be mistaken," he said.
Allie felt a sudden rush of emotion. Her opportunity had come. "I am Allie Lee.
My mother ran off with Durade; to California. He used her as a lure to draw men to his gambling-hells; as he uses me now ... Two years ago we escaped; started east with a caravan. The Indians attacked us. I crawled under a rock; escaped the massacre. I; "
"Never mind all your story," interrupted Hough. "We haven't time for that. I believe you ... You are held a close prisoner?"
"Oh yes-locked and barred. I never get out. I have been threatened so; that until now I feared to tell anyone. But Durade; he is going mad. I; I can bear it no longer."
"Miss Lee, you shall not bear it," declared Ancliffe. "We'll take you out of here."
"How?" queried Hough, shortly.
Ancliffe was for walking right out with her, but Hough shook his head.
"Listen," began Allie, hurriedly. "He would kill me the instant I tried to escape. He loved my mother. He does not believe she is dead. He lives only to be revenged upon her ... He has a desperate gang here. Fresno, Mull, Stitt, Black,
Grist, Dayss, a greaser called Mex, and others; all the worst of bad men. You cannot get me out of here alive except by some trick."
"How about bringing the troops?"
"Durade would kill me the first thing."
"Could we steal you out at night?"
"I don't see how. They are awake all night. I am barred in, watched ... Better work on Durade's weakness. Gold! He's mad for gold. When the fever's on him he might gamble me away; or sell me for gold."
Hough's cold eyes shone like fire in ice. He opened his lips to speak; then quickly motioned Ancliffe back to the table. They had just seated themselves when the two gamblers returned, followed by Durade. He was rubbing his hands in satisfaction.
"What was the fuss about?" queried Hough, tipping the ashes off his cigar.
"Some drunks after money they had lost."
"And got thrown out for their pains?" inquired Ancliffe.
"Yes. Mull and Fresno are out there now."
The game was taken up again. Allie sensed a different note in it. The gambler
Hough now faced her in his position at the table; and behind every card he played there seemed to be intense purpose and tremendous force. Ancliffe soon left the game. But he appeared fascinated where formerly he had been indifferent. Soon it developed that Hough, by his spirit and skill, was driving his opponents, inciting their passion for play, working upon their feelings.
Durade seemed the weakest gambler, though he had the best luck. Good luck balanced his excited play. The two other gamblers pitted themselves against
Hough.
The shadows of evening had begun to darken the room when Durade called for lights. A slim, sloe-eyed, pantherish-moving Mexican came in to execute the order. He wore a belt with a knife in it and looked like a brigand. When he had lighted the lamps he approached Durade and spoke in Spanish. Durade replied in the same tongue. Then the Mexican went out. One of the gamblers lost and arose from the table.
"Gentlemen, may I go out for more money and return to the game?" he asked.
"Certainly," replied Hough.
Durade assented with bad grace.
The game went on and grew in interest. Probably the Mexican had reported the fact of its possibilities, or perhaps Durade had sent out word of some nature.
For one by one his villainous lieutenants came in, stepping softly, gleaming-eyed.
"Durade, have you stopped play outside?" queried Hough.
"Supper-time. Not much going on," replied Mull.
Hough watched this speaker with keen coolness.
"I did not address you," he said.
Durade, catching the drift, came out of his absorption of play long enough to say that with a big game at hand he did not want to risk any interruption. He spoke frankly, but he d
id not look sincere.
Presently the second gambler announced that he would consider it a favor to be allowed to go out and borrow money. Then he left hurriedly. Durade and Hough played alone; and the luck seesawed from one to the other until both the other players returned. They did not come alone. Two more black-frocked, black-sombreroed, cold-faced individuals accompanied them.
"May we sit in?" they asked.
"With pleasure," replied Hough.
Durade frowned and the glow left his face. Though the luck was still with him, it was evident that he did not favor added numbers. Yet the man's sensitiveness to any change immediately manifested itself when he won the first large stake.
His radiance returned and also his vanity.
Hough interrupted the game by striking the table with his hand. The sound seemed hard, metallic, yet his hand was empty. Any attentive observer would have become aware that Hough had a gun up his sleeve. But Durade did not catch the significance.
"I object to that man leaning over the table," said Hough, and he pointed to the lounging Fresno.
"Thet so?" leered the ugly giant. He looked bold and vicious.
"Do not address me," ordered Hough.
Fresno backed away silently from the cold-faced gambler.
"Don't mind him, Hough," protested Durade. "They're all excited. Big stakes always work them up."
"Send them out so we can play without annoyance."
"No," replied Durade, sharply. "They can watch the game."
"Ancliffe," called Hough, just as sharply, "fetch some of my friends to watch this game. Don't forget Neale and Larry King."
Allie, who was watching and listening with strained faculties, nearly fainted at the sudden mention of her lover Neale and her friend Larry. She went blind for a second; the room turned round and round; she thought her heart would burst with joy.
The Englishman hurried out.
Durade looked up with a passionate and wolfish swiftness.
"What do you mean?"
"I want some of my friends to watch the game," replied Hough.
"But I don't allow that red-headed cowboy gun-fighter to come into my place."
"That is regrettable, for you will make an exception this time ... Durade, you don't stand well in Benton. I do."
The Spaniard's eyes glittered. "You insinuate; SENOR; "
"Yes," interposed Hough, and his cold, deliberate voice dominated the explosive
Durade. "Do you remember a gambler named Jones? ... He was shot in this room ...
If _I_ should happen to be shot here; in the same way; you and your gang would not last long in Benton!"
Durade's face grew livid with rage and fear. And in that moment the mask was off. The nature of the Spaniard stood forth. Another manifest fact was that
Durade had not before matched himself against a gambler of Hough's caliber.
"Well, are you only a bluff or do we go on with the game?" inquired Hough.
Durade choked back his rage and signified with a motion of his hand that play should be resumed.
Allie fastened her eyes upon the door. She was in a tumult of emotion. Despite that, her mind revolved wild and intermittent ideas as to the risk of letting
Neale see and recognize her there. Yet her joy was so overpowering that she believed if he entered the door she would rush to him and trust in God to save her. In God and Reddy King! She remembered the cowboy, and a thrill linked all her emotions. Durade and his gang would face a terrible reckoning if Reddy King ever entered to see her there.
Moments passed. 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 passion 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-hell! 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 scraped, 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 passionate 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, hoarsely.
"I offer you my winnings; ALL; FOR THE GIRL YOU HAVE HERE!"
"You are crazy!" ejaculated 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!" asserted 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 passion 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.
