The Zane Grey Megapack, page 458
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 did 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—señor—”
“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.
“Señor—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?”
“Señor, 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, Señor!” 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 passion 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.
“Señor, 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.”
“Señor, 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, smashing 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!”
While the Englishman opened the window Hough stood in front of the door with both arms extended. Allie could just see his tall form in the pale gloom. Pandemonium had begun in the other room, with Durade screaming for lights, and his men yelling and fighting for the gold, and Hough’s friends struggling to get out. But they did not follow Hough into this room and evidently must have thought he had escaped through the other door.
“Come,” said Ancliffe, touching Allie.
He helped her get out, and followed laboriously. Then he softly called to Hough. The gambler let himself down swiftly and noiselessly.
“Now what?” he muttered.
They appeared to be in a narrow alley between a house of boards and a house of canvas. Excited voices sounded inside this canvas structure and evidently alarmed Hough, for with a motion he enjoined silence and led Allie through the dark passage out into a gloomy square surrounded by low, dark structures. Ancliffe followed close behind.
The night was dark, with no stars showing. A cool wind blew in Allie’s face, refreshing her after her long confinement. Hough began groping forward. This square had a rough board floor and a skeleton framework. It had been a house of canvas. Some of the partitions were still standing.
“Look for a door—any place to get out,” whispered Hough to Ancliffe, as they came to the opposite side of this square space. Hough, with Allie close at his heels, went to the right while Ancliffe went to the left. Hough went so far, then muttering, drew Allie back again to the point whence they had started. Ancliffe was there.
“No place! All boarded up tight,” he whispered.
“Same on this side. We’ll have to—”
“Listen!” exclaimed Ancliffe, holding up his hand.
There appeared to be noise all around, but mostly on the other side of the looming canvas house, behind which was the alleyway that led to Durade’s hall. Gleams of light flashed through the gloom. Durade’s high, quick voice mingled with hoarser and deeper tones. Some one in the canvas house was talking to Durade, who apparently must have been in Allie’s room and at her window.
“See hyar, Greaser, we ain’t harborin’ any of your outfit, an’ we’ll plug the fust gent we see,” called a surly voice.
Durade’s staccato tones succeeded it. “Did you see them?”
“We heerd them gettin’ out the winder.”
Durade’s voice rose high in Spanish curses. Then he called:
“Fresno—Mull—take men—go around the street. They can’t get away… You, Mex, get down in there with the gang.”
Lower voices answered, questioning, eager, but indistinct.
“Kill him—bring her back—and you can have the gold,” shouted Durade.
Following that came the heavy tramp of boots and the low roar of angry men.
Hough leaned toward Ancliffe. “They’ve got us penned in.”
“Yes. But it’s pretty dark here. And they’ll be slow. You watch while I tear a hole through somewhere,” replied Ancliffe.
