THE GAMBLING-ROOM
They confronted each other blankly. To Nan's confusion was added her
embarrassment at her personal appearance. Her hat was wet, and the
limp shoulders of her khaki jacket and the front of her silk blouse
showed the wilting effect of the rain. In one hand she clutched wet
riding-gloves. Her cheeks, either from the cold rain or mental stress,
fairly burned, and her eyes, which had seemed when he encountered her,
fired with some resolve, changed to an expression almost of dismay.
This was hardly for more than an instant. Then her lips tightened, her
eyes dropped, and she took a step to one side to avoid de Spain and
enter the gambling-room. He stepped in front of her. She looked up,
furious. "What do you mean?" she exclaimed with indignation. "Let me
pass."
The sound of her voice restored his self-possession. He made no move
to get out of her way, indeed he rather pointedly continued to
obstruct her. "You've made a mistake, I think," he said evenly.
"I have not," she replied with resentment. "Let me pass."
"I think you have. You don't know where you are going," he persisted,
his eyes bent uncompromisingly on hers.
She showed increasing irritation at his attempt to exculpate her. "I
know perfectly well where I am going," she retorted with heat.
"Then you know," he returned steadily, "that you've no business to
enter such a place."
His opposition seemed only to anger her. "I know where I have
business. I need no admonitions from you as to what places I enter.
You are impertinent, insulting. Let me pass!"
His stubborn opposition showed no signs of weakening before her
resolve. "One question," he said, ignoring her angry words. "Have you
ever been in these rooms before?"
He thought she quailed the least bit before his searching look. She
even hesitated as to what to say. But if her eyes fell momentarily it
was only to collect herself. "Yes," she answered, looking up
unflinchingly.
Her resolute eyes supported her defiant word and openly challenged his
interference, but he met her once more quietly. "I am sorry to hear
it," he rejoined. "But that won't make any difference. You can't go in
to-night."
"I will go in," she cried.
"No," he returned slowly, "you are not going in--not, at least, while
I am here."
They stood immovable. He tried to reason her out of her determination.
She resented every word he offered. "You are most insolent," she
exclaimed. "You are interfering in something that is no concern of
yours. You have no right to act in this outrageous way. If you don't
stand aside I'll call for help."
"Nan!" De Spain spoke her name suddenly and threateningly. His words
fell fast, and he checked her for an instant with his vehemence. "We
met in the Gap a week ago. I said I was telling you the exact truth.
Did I do it?"
"I don't care what you said or what you did----"
"Answer me," he said sharply, "did I tell you the truth?"
"I don't know or care----"
"Yes, you do know----"
"What you say or do----"
"I told you the truth then, I am telling it now. I will never see you
enter a gambling-room as long as I can prevent it. Call for help if
you like."
She looked at him with amazement. She seemed about to speak--to make
another protest. Instead, she turned suddenly away, hesitated again,
put both her hands to her face, burst into tears, and hurried toward
the stairs. De Spain followed her. "Let me take you to where you are
going?"
Nan turned on him, her eyes blazing through her tears, with a single,
scornful, furious word: "No!" She quickened her step from him in such
confusion that she ran into two men just reaching the top of the
stairs. They separated with alacrity, and gave her passage. One of the
men was Lefever, who, despite his size, was extremely nimble in
getting out of her urgent way, and quick in lifting his hat. She
fairly raced down the flight of steps, leaving Lefever looking after
her in astonishment. He turned to de Spain: "Now, who the deuce was
that?"
De Spain ignored his question by asking another: "Did you find him?"
Lefever shook his head. "Not a trace; I covered Main Street. I guess
Bob was right. Nobody home here, Henry?"
"Nobody we want."
"Nothing going on?"
"Not a thing. If you will wait here for Bob, I'll run over to the
office and answer those telegrams."
De Spain started for the stairs. "Henry," called Lefever, as his
companion trotted hastily down, "if you catch up to her, kindly
apologize for a fat man."
But de Spain was balked of an opportunity to follow Nan. In the street
he ran into Scott. "Did you get the story?" demanded de Spain.
"Part of it."
"Was it Sassoon?"
Scott shook his head. "I wish it was."
"What do you mean?"
"Deaf Sandusky."
"Calabasas?"
Scott nodded. "You must have moved a couple of inches at the right
nick, Henry. That man Sandusky," Bob smiled a sickly smile, "doesn't
miss very often. He was bothered a little by his friends being all
around you."
The two regarded each other for a moment in silence. "Why," asked de
Spain, boiling a little, "should that damned, hulking brute try to
blow _my_ head off just now?"
"Only for the good of the order, Henry," grinned the scout.
"Nice job Jeff has picked out for me," muttered de Spain grimly,
"standing up in these Sleepy Cat barrooms to be shot at." He drew in a
good breath and threw up the wet brim of his hat. "Well, such is life
in the high country, I suppose. Some fine day Mr. Sandusky will manage
to get me--or I'll manage to get him--that all depends on how the
happening happens. Anyway, Bob, it's bad luck to miss a man. We'll
hang that much of a handicap on his beef-eating crop. Is he the fellow
John calls the butcher?" demanded de Spain.
"That's what everybody calls him, I guess."
The two rejoined Lefever at the head of the stairs and the three
discussed the news. Even Lefever seemed more serious when he heard the
report. Scott, when asked where Sandusky now was, nodded toward the
big room in front of them.
Lefever looked toward the gambling-tables. "We'll go in and look at
him." He turned to Scott to invite his comment on the proposal. "Think
twice, John," suggested the Indian. "If there's any trouble in a crowd
like that, somebody that has no interest in de Spain or Sandusky is
pretty sure to get hurt."
"I don't mean to start anything," explained Lefever. "I only want de
Spain to look at him."
But sometimes things start themselves. Lefever found Sandusky at a
faro-table. At his side sat his partner, Logan. Three other players,
together with the onlookers, and the dealer--whose tumbled hair fell
partly over the visor that protected his eyes from the glare of the
overhead light--made up the group. The table stood next to that of
Tenison, who, white-faced and impassive under the heat and light,
still held to his chair.
Lefever took a position at one end of the table, where he faced
Sandusky, and de Spain, just behind his shoulder, had a chance to look
the two Calabasas men closely over. Sandusky again impressed him as a
powerful man, who, beyond an ample stomach, carried his weight without
showing it. What de Spain most noted, as it lay on the table, was the
size and extreme length of the outlaw's hand. He had heard of
Sandusky's hand. From the tips of the big fingers to the base of the
palm, this right hand, spread over his chips, would cover half again
the length of the hand of the average man.
De Spain credited readily the extraordinary stories he had heard of
Sandusky's dexterity with a revolver or a rifle. That he should so
lately have missed a shot at so close range was partly explained
now that de Spain perceived Sandusky's small, hard, brown eyes
were somewhat unnaturally bright, and that his brows knit every
little while in his effort to collect himself. But his stimulation
only partly explained the failure; it was notoriously hard to upset
the powerful outlaw with alcohol. De Spain noted the coarse,
straw-colored hair--plastered recently over the forehead by a
barber--the heavy, sandy mustache, freshly waxed by the same hand,
the bellicose nostrils of the Roman nose, the broad, split chin,
and mean, deep lines of a most unpromising face. Sandusky's brown
shirt sprawled open at the collar, and de Spain remembered again
the flashy waistcoat, fastened at the last buttonhole by a cut-glass
button.
At Sandusky's side sat his crony in all important undertakings--a much
smaller, sparer man, with aggressive shoulders and restless eyes.
Logan was the lookout of the pair, and his roving glance lighted on de
Spain before the latter had inspected him more than a moment. He lost
no time in beginning on de Spain with an insolent question as to what
he was looking at. De Spain, his eye bent steadily on him, answered
with a tone neither of apology nor pronounced offense: "I am looking
at you."
Lefever hitched at his trousers cheerily and, stepping away from de
Spain, took a position just behind the dealer. "What are you looking
at me for?" demanded Logan insolently.
De Spain raised his voice to match exactly the tone of the inquiry.
"So I'll know you next time."
Logan pushed back his chair. As he turned his legs from under the
table to rise, a hand rested on his shoulder. He looked up and saw the
brown face and feeble smile of Scott. Logan with his nearest foot
kicked Sandusky. The big fellow looked up and around. Either by chance
or in following the sound of the last voice, his glance fell on de
Spain. He scrutinized for a suspicious instant the burning eyes and
the red mark low on the cheek. While he did so--comprehension dawning
on him--his enormous hands, forsaking the pile of chips with which
both had been for a moment busy, flattened out, palms down, on the
faro-table. Logan tried to rise. Scott's hand rested heavily on him.
"What's the row?" demanded Sandusky in the queer tone of a deaf man.
Logan pointed at de Spain. "That Medicine Bend duck wants a fight."
"With a man, Logan; not with a cub," retorted de Spain, matching
insult with insult.
"Maybe I can do something for you," interposed Sandusky. His eyes ran
like a flash around the table. He saw how Lefever had pre-empted the
best place in the room. He looked up and back at the man standing now
at his shoulder, and almost between Logan and himself. It was the
Indian, Scott. Sandusky felt, as his faculties cleared and arranged
themselves every instant, that there was no hurry whatever about
lifting his hand; but he could not be faced down without a show of
resistance, and he concluded that for this occasion his tongue was the
best weapon. "If I can," he added stiffly, "I'm at your service."
De Spain made no answer beyond keeping his eyes well on Sandusky's
eyes. Tenison, overhearing the last words, awoke to the situation and
rose from his case. He made his way through the crowd around the
disputants and brusquely directed the dealer to close the game. While
Sandusky was cashing in, Tenison took Logan aside. What Tenison said
was not audible, but it sufficed to quiet the little fellow. The only
thing further to be settled was as to who should leave the room last,
since neither party was willing to go first. Tenison, after a formal
conference with Lefever and Logan, offered to take Sandusky and Logan
by a private stairway to the billiard-room, while Lefever took de
Spain and Scott out by way of the main entrance. This was arranged,
and when the railroad men reached the street rain had ceased falling.
Scott warned de Spain to keep within doors, and de Spain promised to
do so. But when they left him he started out at once to see whether he
could not, by some happy chance, encounter Nan.