Zane Grey (36 page)

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 raved.

"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!"

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.

"Pass me 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 an' 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.

"Make this game faster an' bigger, will you?" retorted Blicky, who
seemed inflamed.

"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
whisky.

"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 sight 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, or 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 whisky bottles. Once with a low 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, withholding it. Kells's
sudden look and movement were unmistakable.

The goddess of chance, as false as the bandit's vanity, played with him.
He brightened under a streak of winning. But just as his face began to
lose its haggard shade, to glow, the tide again turned against him.
He lost and lost, and with each bag of gold-dust went something of his
spirit. And when he was reduced to his original share he indeed showed
that yellow streak which Jesse Smith had attributed to him. The bandit's
effort to pull himself together, to be a man before that scornful gang,
was pitiful and futile. He might have been magnificent, confronted by
other issues, of peril or circumstance, but there he was craven. He was
a man who should never have gambled.

One after the other, in quick succession, he lost the two bags of gold,
his original share. He had lost utterly. Gulden had the great heap of
dirty little buckskin sacks, so significant of the hidden power within.

Joan was amazed and sick at sight of Kells then, and if it had been
possible she would have withdrawn her gaze. But she was chained there.
The catastrophe was imminent.

Kells stared down at the gold. His jaw worked convulsively. He had the
eyes of a trapped wolf. Yet he seemed not wholly to comprehend what had
happened to him.

Gulden rose, slow, heavy, ponderous, to tower over his heap of gold.
Then this giant, who had never shown an emotion, suddenly, terribly
blazed.

"One more bet—a cut of the cards—my whole stake of gold!" he boomed.

The bandits took a stride forward as one man, then stood breathless.

"One bet!" echoed Kells, aghast. "Against what?"

"AGAINST THE GIRL!"

Joan sank against the wall, a piercing torture in her breast. She
clutched the logs to keep from falling. So that was the impending
horror. She could not unrivet her eyes from the paralyzed Kells, yet
she seemed to see Jim Cleve leap straight up, and then stand, equally
motionless, with Kells.

"One cut of the cards—my gold against the girl!" boomed the giant.

Kells made a movement as if to go for his gun. But it failed. His hand
was a shaking leaf.

"You always bragged on your nerve!" went on Gulden, mercilessly. "You're
the gambler of the border!... Come on."

Kells stood there, his doom upon him. Plain to all was his torture,
his weakness, his defeat. It seemed that with all his soul he combated
something, only to fail.

"ONE CUT—MY GOLD AGAINST YOUR GIRL!"

The gang burst into one concerted taunt. Like snarling, bristling wolves
they craned their necks at Kells.

"No, damn—you! No!" cried Kells, in hoarse, broken fury. With both
hands before him he seemed to push back the sight of that gold, of
Gulden, of the malignant men, of a horrible temptation.

"Reckon, boss, thet yellow streak is operatin'!" sang out Jesse Smith.

But neither gold, nor Gulden, nor men, nor taunts ruined Kells at this
perhaps most critical crisis of his life. It was the mad, clutching,
terrible opportunity presented. It was the strange and terrible nature
of the wager. What vision might have flitted through the gambler's mind!
But neither vision of loss nor gain moved him. There, licking like a
flame at his soul, consuming the good in him at a blast, overpowering
his love, was the strange and magnificent gamble. He could not resist
it.

Speechless, with a motion of his hand, he signified his willingness.

"Blicky, shuffle the cards," boomed Gulden.

Blicky did so and dropped the deck with a slap in the middle of the
table.

"Cut!" called Gulden.

Kells's shaking hand crept toward the deck.

Jim Cleve suddenly appeared to regain power of speech and motion.
"Don't, Kells, don't!" he cried, piercingly, as he leaped forward.

But neither Kells nor the others heard him, or even saw his movement.

Kells cut the deck. He held up his card. It was the king of hearts. What
a transformation! His face might have been that of a corpse suddenly
revivified with glorious, leaping life.

"Only an ace can beat thet!" muttered Jesse Smith into the silence.

Gulden reached for the deck as if he knew every card left was an ace.
His cavernous eyes gloated over Kells. He cut, and before he looked
himself he let Kells see the card.

"You can't beat my streak!" he boomed.

Then he threw the card upon the table. It was the ace of spades.

Kells seemed to shrivel, to totter, to sink. Jim Cleve went quickly to
him, held to him.

"Kells, go say good—by to your girl!" boomed Gulden. "I'll want her
pretty soon.... Come on, you Beady and Braverman. Here's your chance to
get even."

Gulden resumed his seat, and the two bandits invited to play were eager
to comply, while the others pressed close once more.

Jim Cleve led the dazed Kells toward the door into Joan's cabin. For
Joan just then all seemed to be dark.

When she recovered she was lying on the bed and Jim was bending over
her. He looked frantic with grief and desperation and fear.

"Jim! Jim!" she moaned, grasping his hands. He helped her to sit up.
Then she saw Kells standing there. He looked abject, stupid, drunk. Yet
evidently he had begun to comprehend the meaning of his deed.

"Kells," began Cleve, in low, hoarse tones, as he stepped forward with a
gun. "I'm going to kill you—and Joan—and myself!"

Kells stared at Cleve. "Go ahead. Kill me. And kill the girl, too.
That'll be better for her now. But why kill yourself?"

"I love her. She's my wife!"

The deadness about Kells suddenly changed. Joan flung herself before
him.

"Kells—listen," she whispered in swift, broken passion. "Jim Cleve
was—my sweetheart—back in Hoadley. We quarreled. I taunted him. I said
he hadn't nerve enough—even to be bad. He left me—bitterly enraged.
Next day I trailed him. I wanted to fetch him back.... You remember—how
you met me with Robert—how you killed Roberts? And all the rest?...
When Jim and I met out here—I was afraid to tell you. I tried to
influence him. I succeeded—till we got to Alder Creek. There he went
wild. I married him—hoping to steady him.... Then the day of the
lynching—we were separated from you in the crowd. That night we
hid—and next morning took the stage. Gulden and his gang held up the
stage. They thought you had put us there. We fooled them, but we had to
come on—here to Cabin Gulch—hoping to tell—that you'd let us go....
And now—now—"

Joan had not strength to go on. The thought of Gulden made her faint.

"It's true, Kells," added Cleve, passionately, as he faced the
incredulous bandit. "I swear it. Why, you ought to see now!"

"My God, boy, I DO see!" gasped Kells. That dark, sodden thickness of
comprehension and feeling, indicative of the hold of drink, passed away
swiftly. The shock had sobered him.

Instantly Joan saw it—saw in him the return of the other and better
Kells, how stricken with remorse. She slipped to her knees and clasped
her arms around him. He tried to break her hold, but she held on.

"Get up!" he ordered, violently. "Jim, pull her away!... Girl, don't do
that in front of me... I've just gambled away—"

"Her life, Kells, only that, I swear," cried Cleve.

"Kells, listen," began Joan, pleadingly. "You will not let that—that
CANNIBAL have me?"

"No, by God!" replied Kells, thickly. "I was drunk—crazy.... Forgive
me, girl! You see—how did I know—what was coming?... Oh, the whole
thing is hellish!"

"You loved me once," whispered Joan, softly. "Do you love me still?...
Kells, can't you see? It's not too late to save my life—and YOUR
soul!... Can't you see? You have been bad. But if you save me now—from
Gulden—save me for this boy I've almost ruined—you—you.... God will
forgive you!... Take us away—go with us—and never come back to the
border."

"Maybe I can save you," he muttered, as if to himself. He appeared to
want to think, but to be bothered by the clinging arms around him. Joan
felt a ripple go over his body and he seemed to heighten, and the touch
of his hands thrilled.

Then, white and appealing, Cleve added his importunity.

"Kells, I saved your life once. You said you'd remember it some day.
Now—now!... For God's sake don't make me shoot her!"

Joan rose from her knees, but she still clasped Kells. She seemed to
feel the mounting of his spirit, to understand how in this moment he was
rising out of the depths. How strangely glad she was for him!

"Joan, once you showed me what the love of a good woman really was. I've
never seen the same since then. I've grown better in one way—worse
in all others.... I let down. I was no man for the border. Always that
haunted me. Believe me, won't you—despite all?"

Joan felt the yearning in him for what he dared not ask. She read his
mind. She knew he meant, somehow, to atone for his wrong.

"I'll show you again," she whispered. "I'll tell you more. If I'd never
loved Jim Cleve—if I'd met you, I'd have loved you.... And, bandit or
not, I'd have gone with you to the end of the world!"