Cabin Gulch (36 page)

The name Overland drew Joan like a magnet and she arose to take her old position, where she could peep in on the bandits. One glance at Jim Cleve told her that he, too, had been excited by the name. Then it occurred to Joan that her uncle could hardly have been at Alder Creek without Jim's knowing it. Still, among thousands of men, all wild and toiling and self-sufficient, hiding their identities, anything might be possible. After a few moments, however, Joan leaned to the improbability of the man's being her uncle.

Kells sat down before the table and Blicky stood beside him with the gold scales. The other bandits were lined up opposite. Jim Cleve stood to one side, watching, brooding.

“You can't weigh it all on these scales,” said Blicky.

“That's sure,” replied Kells. “We'll divide the small bags first. Nine shares . . . nine equal parts . . . spill out the bags, Blicky. And hurry. Look how hungry Gulden looks. Somebody cook your breakfast while we divide the gold.”

“Haw! Haw!”

“Ho! Ho!”

“Who'n hell wants to eat?”

The bandits were gay, derisive, scornful, eager, like a group of boys, half surly, half playful at a game.

“Wal, I shore want to see my share weighed,” drawled Budd.

Kells moved—his gun flashed—he slammed it hard upon the table.

“Budd, do you question my honesty?” he asked, quick and hard.

“No offense, boss. I was just talkin'.”

That quick change of Kells marked a subtle difference
in the spirit of the bandits and the occasion. Gaiety and good-humor and badinage ended. There were no more broad grins or friendly leers or coarse laughs. Gulden and his group clustered closer to the table, quiet, intense, watchful, suspicious.

It did not take Kells and his assistant long to divide the smaller quantity of the gold.

“Here, Gulden,” he said, handing the giant a bag. “Jesse. Bossert. Pike. Beady. Braverman. Blicky. Here, Jim Cleve, get in on the game,” he added, throwing a bag at Jim. It was heavy. It hit Jim, with a
thud
and dropped to the ground. Jim stooped to reach it.

“That leaves one for Handy and one for me,” went on Kells. “Blicky, spill out the big bag.”

Presently Joan saw a huge mound of dull gleaming yellow. The color of it leaped to the glinting eyes of the bandits, and it seemed to her that a shadow hovered over them. The movements of Kells grew tense and hurried. Beads of sweat stood out upon his brow. His hands were not steady.

Soon larger bags were distributed to the bandits. That broke the waiting—the watchfulness, but not the tense eagerness. The bandits were now like leashed hounds. Blicky leaned over before Kells and hit the table with his fist.

“Boss, I've a kick comin',” he said.

“Come out with it,” replied the leader.

“Ain't Gulden a-goin' to divide up thet big nugget?”

“He is, if he's square.”

A chorus of affirmatives from the bandits strengthened Kells's statement. Gulden moved heavily and ponderously, and he pushed some of his comrades aside to get nearer to Kells.

“Wasn't it my right to do a job by myself . . . when I wanted?” he demanded.

“No. I agreed to let you fight when you wanted. To kill a man when you liked. That was the agreement.”

“What'd I kill a man for?”

No one answered that in words, but the answer was there in dark faces.

“I know what
I
meant,” stated Gulden. “And I'm going to keep this nugget.”

There was a moment's silence. It boded ill to the giant.

“So . . . he declares himself,” said Blicky hotly. “Boss, what you say goes.”

“Let him keep it,” declared Kells scornfully. “I'll win it from him and divide it with the gang.”

That was received with hoarse acclaims by all except Gulden. He glared sullenly. Kells stood up and shook a long finger in the giant's face.

“I'll win your nugget!” he shouted. “I'll beat you at any game. I call your hand. Now if you're got any nerve!”

“Come on!” boomed the giant, and he threw his gold down upon the table with a crash.

The bandits closed in around the table with sudden hard violence, all crowding for seats.

“I'm a-goin' to set in the game!” yelled Blicky.

“We'll all set in,” declared Jesse Smith. “Come in and be damned!” was Gulden's acquiescence.

“But we can't all play at once,” protested Kells. “Let's make up two games.”

“Naw!”

“Some of you eat then, while the others get cleaned out.”

“Thet's it . . . cleaned out!” ejaculated Budd meanly. “You seem to be sure, Kells. An' I guess I keep shy of thet game.”

“That's twice for you, Budd,” flashed the bandit leader. “Beware of the third time!”

“Hyar, fellers, cut the cards fer who sets in an' who sets out!” called Blicky, and he slapped a deck of cards on the table.

With grim eagerness, as if drawing lots against fate, the bandits bent over and drew cards. Budd, Braverman, and Beady Jones were the ones excluded from the game.

“Beady, you fellows unpack those horses and turn them loose, and bring the stuff inside,” said Kells.

Budd showed a surly disregard, but the other two bandits got up willingly and went out.

Then the game began, with only Cleve standing, looking on. The bandits were mostly silent; they moved their hands, and occasionally bent forward. It was every man against his neighbor. Gulden seemed implacably indifferent and played like a machine. Blicky sat, eager and excited, under a spell. Jesse Smith was a slow, cool, shrewd gambler. Bossert and Pike, two ruffians almost unknown to Joan, appeared carried away by their opportunity. And Kells began to wear the strange rapt weak expression that gambling gave him.

Presently Beady Jones and Braverman bristled in, carrying the packs. Then Budd jumped up and ran to them. He returned to the table, carrying a demijohn, which he banged on the table.

“Whiskey!” exclaimed Kells. “Take that away. We can't drink and gamble.”

“Watch me!” replied Blicky.

“Let them drink, Kells,” declared Gulden. “We'll get their dust quicker. Then we can have our game.”

Kells made no more comment. The game went on and the aspect of it changed. When Kells himself began
to drink, seemingly unconscious of the fact, Joan's dread increased greatly, and, leaving the peep hole, she lay back on the bed. Always a sword had hung over her head. Time after time by some fortunate circumstance or by courage or wit or by an act of Providence she had escaped what strangely menaced. Would she escape it again? She felt the catastrophe coming. Did Jim recognize that fact? Remembering the look on his face, she was worried that he did. Then he would be quick to seize upon any possible chance to get her away, and always he would be between her and these bandits. At most, then, she had only death to fear—death that he would mercifully deal to her if the worst came. As she lay there, listening to the slow-rising murmur of the gamblers, with her thought growing clearer, she realized it was love of Jim and fear for him—fear that he would lose her—that caused her cold dread and the laboring breath and the weighted heart. She had cost Jim this terrible experience and she wanted to make up to him for it, to give him herself and all her life.

Joan lay there a long time, thinking and suffering, while the strange morbid desire to watch Kells and Gulden grew stronger and stronger, until it was irresistible. Her fate, her life lay in the balance between those two men. She divined that.

She returned to her vantage point, and, as she glanced through, she vibrated to a shock. The change that had begun subtly, intangibly was now a terrible and glaring difference. That great quantity of gold, the equal chance of every gambler, the marvelous possibilities presented to evil minds, and the hell that hid in that black bottle—these had made playthings of every bandit except Gulden. He was exactly the same as ever. But to see the others sent a chill of ice along Joan's veins. Kells was white and rapt. Plain to
see—he had won! Blicky was wild with rage. Jesse Smith sat darker, grimmer, but no longer cool. There was hate in the glance he fastened upon Kells as he bet. Beady Jones and Braverman showed an inflamed and impotent eagerness to take their turn. Budd sat in the game now and his face wore a terrible look. Joan could not tell what passion drove him, but she knew he was a loser. Pike and Bossert likewise were losers, and stood apart, sullen, watching with sick jealous rage. Jim Cleve had reacted to the strain, and he was white, with nervous clutching hands and piercing glances. And the game went on with violent slap of card or pound of fist on the table, with the slide of a bag of gold or the rock-sodden thump of its weight, with savage curses at loss and strange raw exultation at gain, with hurry and violence—more than all with the wildness of the hour and the wildness of these men drawing closer and closer to the dread climax that from the beginning had been foreshadowed.

Suddenly Budd rose and bent over the table, his cards clutched in a shaking hand, his face distorted and malignant, his eyes burning at Kells. Passionately he threw the cards down.

“There!” he yelled hoarsely, and he stilled the noise

“No good!” replied Kells tauntingly. “Is there any other game you play?”

Budd bent low to see the cards in Kells's hand, and then, straightening his form, he gazed with haggard fury at the winner. “You've done me! I'm cleaned . . . I'm busted!” he roared.

“You were easy. Get out of the game,” replied Kells with an exultant contempt. It was not the passion of play that now obsessed him, but the passion of success.

“I said you done me!” burst out Budd insanely. “You're slick with the cards!”

The accusation acted like magic to silence the bandits, to check movement, to clamp the situation. Kells was white and radiant; he seemed careless and nonchalant.

“All right, Budd,” he replied, but his tone did not suit his strange look. “That's three times for you. Go to hell!”

Swift as a flash he shot. Budd fell over Gulden, and the giant, with one sweep of his arm, threw the stricken bandit off. Budd fell heavily, and neither moved nor spoke.

“Drag him out, you fellows,” ordered Kells, as if it were a matter of bridling his horse. Pike and Bossert laid hold of Budd, and dragged him out feet first. “Pass us the bottle,” went on Kells, a little hoarse shakiness in his voice. “And go on with the game.”

“Can I set in now?” asked Beady Jones eagerly.

“You and Jack wait. This's getting to be all between Kells and me,” said Gulden.

“We've sure got Blicky done!” exclaimed Kells. There was something taunting about the leader's words. He did not care for the gold. It was the fight to win. It was his egotism.

“Like hell you have!” retorted Blicky who seemed inflamed. “Make this game faster an' bigger, will you?”

“Boss, a little luck makes you lofty,” interposed Jesse Smith in dark disdain. “Pretty soon you'll show yellow clear to your gizzard!”

The gold lay there on the table. It was only a means to an end. It signified nothing. The evil, the terrible greed, the brutal lust were in the hearts of the men, and hate, liberated, rampant, stalked out unconcealed, ready for blood.

“Gulden, change the game to suit these gents,” taunted Kells.

“Double stakes. Cut the cards!” boomed the giant instantly.

Blicky lasted only a few more deals of the cards, then he rose, loser of all his share, a passionate and venomous bandit, ready for murder. But he kept his mouth shut and looked wary.

“Boss, can't we set in now?” demanded Beady Jones.

“Say, Beady, you're in a hurry to lose your gold,” replied Kells. “Wait till I beat Gulden and Smith.”

Luck turned against Jesse Smith. He lost first to Gulden, then to Kells, and presently he rose, a beaten, but game man. He reached for the whiskey.

“Fellers, I reckon I can enjoy Kells's yellow streak more when I ain't playin',” he said.

The bandit leader eyed Smith with awakening rancor, as if a persistent hint of inevitable weakness had its effect. He frowned, and the radiance left his face for the forbidding cast. “Stand around, you men, and see some real gambling,” he said.

At this moment in the contest Kells had twice as much gold as Gulden, there being a huge mound of little buckskin sacks in front of him.

They began staking a bag at a time and cutting the cards, the higher card winning. Kells won the first four cuts. How strangely that radiance returned to his face. Then he lost and won, and won and lost. The other bandits grouped around, only Jones and Braverman now manifesting any eagerness. All were silent. There were suspense, strain, mystery in the air. Gulden began to win consistently and Kells began to change. It was a sad and strange night to see this strong man's nerve and force gradually deteriorate under a fickle fortune. The time came when half the amount he had collected was in front of Gulden. The giant was imperturbable. He might have been a huge
animal, a destiny, or something inhuman that knew the run of luck would be his. As he had taken losses, so he greeted gains—with absolute indifference. While Kells's hands shook, the giant's were steady and slow and sure. It must have been hateful to Kells—this faculty of Gulden's to meet victory identically as he met defeat. The test of a great gambler's nerve was not in sustaining loss, but in remaining cool with victory. The fact grew manifest that Gulden was a great gambler, and Kells was not. The giant had no emotion, no imagination, and Kells seemed all fire and whirling hope and despair and rage. His vanity began to bleed to death. This game was the deciding contest. The scornful and exultant looks of his men proved how that game was going. Again and again Kells's unsteady hand reached for one of the whiskey bottles. Once with a curse he threw an empty bottle through the door.

“Hey, boss, ain't it about time . . . ,” began Jesse Smith. But whatever he had intended to say, he thought better of it. Kells's sudden look and movement were unmistakable.