THE FIGHT
We ate a very silent supper, washed our dishes methodically, and walked
up to town. The Bella Union was the largest of the three gambling
houses--a log and canvas structure some forty feet long by perhaps
twenty wide. A bar extended across one end, and the gaming tables were
arranged down the middle. A dozen oil lamps with reflectors furnished
illumination.
All five tables were doing a brisk business; when we paused at the door
for a preliminary survey, the bar was lined with drinkers, and groups of
twos and threes were slowly sauntering here and there or conversing at
the tops of their voices with many guffaws. The air was thick with
tobacco smoke. Johnny stepped just inside the door, moved sideways, and
so stood with his back to the wall. His keen eyes went from group to
group slowly, resting for a moment in turn on each of the five impassive
gamblers and their lookouts, on the two barkeepers, and then one by one
on the men with whom the place was crowded. Following his, my glance
recognized at a corner of the bar Danny Randall with five rough-looking
miners. He caught my eye and nodded. No one else appeared to notice us,
though I imagined the noise of the place sank and rose again at the
first moment of our entrance.
"Jim," said Johnny to me quietly, "there's Danny Randall at the other
end of the room. Go join him. I want you to leave me to play my own
game."
I started to object.
"Please do as I say," insisted Johnny. "I can take care of myself unless
there's a general row. In that case all my friends are better together."
Without further protest I left him, and edged my way to the little group
at the end of the bar. Randall nodded to me as I came up, and motioned
to the barkeeper to set me out a glass, but said nothing. Ours was the
only lot away from the gaming tables not talking. We sipped our drink
and watched Johnny.
After surveying coolly the room, Johnny advanced to the farther of the
gambling tables, and began to play. His back was toward the entrance.
The game was roulette, and Johnny tossed down his bets methodically,
studying with apparent absorption each shift of the wheel. To all
appearance he was intent on the game, and nothing else; and he talked
and laughed with his neighbours and the dealer as though his spirit were
quite carefree.
For ten minutes we watched. Then a huge figure appeared in the blackness
of the doorway, slipped through, and instantly to one side, so that his
back was to the wall. Scar-face Charley had arrived.
He surveyed the place as we had done, almost instantly caught sight of
Johnny, and immediately began to make his way across the room through
the crowds of loungers. Johnny was laying a bet, bending over the table,
joking with the impassive dealer, his back turned to the door, totally
oblivious of his enemy's approach. I started forward, instantly realized
the hopelessness of either getting quickly through that crowd or of
making myself heard, and leaned back, clutching the rail with both
hands. Johnny was hesitating, his hand hovering uncertainly above the
marked squares of the layout, in doubt exactly where to bet. Scar-face
Charley shouldered his way through the loungers and reached the clear
space immediately behind his unconscious victim. He stopped for an
instant, squared his shoulders, and took one step forward. Johnny
dropped his chips on the felt layout, contemplated his choice an
instant--and suddenly whirled on his heel in a lightning about-face.
Although momentarily startled by this unexpected evidence that Johnny
was not so far off guard as he had seemed, the desperado's hand dropped
swiftly to the butt of his pistol. At the same instant Johnny's arm
snapped forward in the familiar motion of drawing from the sleeve. The
motion started clean and smooth, but half through, caught, dragged,
halted. I gasped aloud, but had time for no more than that; Scar-face
Charley's revolver was already on the leap. Then at last Johnny's
derringer appeared, apparently as the result of a desperate effort.
Almost with the motion, it barked, and the big man whirled to the floor,
his pistol, already at half raise, clattering away. The whole episode
from the beginning occupied the space of two eye-winks. Probably no one
but myself and Danny Randall could have caught the slight hitch in
Johnny's draw; and indeed I doubt if anybody saw whence he had snatched
the derringer.
A complete silence fell. It could have lasted only an instant; but
Johnny seized that instant.
"Has this man any friends here?" he asked clearly.
His head was back, and his snapping black eyes seemed to see everywhere
at once.
No one answered or stirred. Johnny held them for perhaps ten seconds,
then deliberately turned back to the table.
"That's my bet on the _even_," said he. "Let her roll!"
The gambler lifted his face, white in the brilliant illumination
directly over his head, and I thought to catch a flicker of something
like admiration in his passionless eyes. Then with his left hand he spun
the wheel.
The soft, dull whir and tiny clicking of the ball as it rebounded from
the metal grooves struck across the tense stillness. As though this was
the releasing signal, a roar of activity burst forth. Men all talked at
once. The other tables and the bar were deserted, and everybody crowded
down toward the lower end of the room. Danny Randall and his friends
rushed determinedly to the centre of disturbance. Some men were carrying
out Scar-face Charley. Others were talking excitedly. A little clear
space surrounded the roulette table, at which, as may be imagined,
Johnny was now the only player. Quite methodically he laid three more
bets.
"I think that's enough for now," he told the dealer pleasantly, and
turned away.
"Hullo! Randall! hullo! Frank!" he greeted us. "I've just won three bets
straight. Let's have a drink. Bring your friends," he told Randall.
We turned toward the bar and way was instantly made for us. Johnny
poured himself a big drink of whiskey. A number of curious men, mere
boys most of them, had crowded close after us, and were standing staring
at Johnny with a curiosity they made slight attempt to conceal. Johnny
suddenly turned to them, holding high his whiskey in a hand as steady as
a rock.
"Here's to crime, boys!" he said, and drank it down at a gulp. Then he
stood staring them uncomprisingly in the face, until they had slunk
away. He called for and drank another whiskey, then abruptly moved
toward the door.
"I think I'll go turn in," said he.
At the door he stopped.
"Good-night," he said to Randall and his friends, who had followed us.
"No, I am obliged to you," he replied to a suggestion, "but I need no
escort," and he said it so firmly that all but Randall went back.
"I'm going to your camp with you, whether you need an escort or not,"
said the latter.
Without a word Johnny walked away down the street, very straight. We
hurried to catch up with him; and just as we did so he collapsed to the
ground and was suddenly and violently sick. As I helped him to his feet,
I could feel that his arm was trembling violently.
"Lord, fellows! I'm ashamed," he gasped a little hysterically. "I didn't
know I had so little nerve!"
"Nerve!" suddenly roared Danny Randall; "confound your confounded
impudence! If I ever hear you say another word like that, I'll put a
head on you, if it's the last act of my life! You're the gamest little
chicken in this roost, and I'll make you beg like a hound if you say you
aren't!"
Johnny laughed a little uncertainly over this contradiction.
"Did I kill him?" he asked.
"No, worse luck; just bored him through the collarbone. That heavy
little derringer ball knocked him out."
"I'm glad of that," said Johnny.
"Which I am _not_," stated Danny Randall with emphasis. "You ought
to have killed him."
"Thanks to you I wasn't killed myself. I couldn't have hoped to get the
draw on him with my holster gun. He is as quick as a snake."
"I thought you were going to bungle it," said Randall. "What was the
matter?"
"Front sight caught at the edge of my sleeve. I had to tear it loose by
main strength. I'm going to file it off. What's the use of a front sight
at close range?"
I heaved a deep sigh.
"Well, I don't want ever to be so scared again," I confessed. "Will you
tell me, by all that's holy, _why_ you turned your back on the
door?"
"Well," said Johnny seriously, "I wanted to get him close to me. If I
had shown him that I'd seen him when he first came in the door, he'd
have opened fire at once. And I'm a rotten shot. But I figured that if
he thought I didn't see him, he'd come across the room to me."
"But he nearly got you by surprise."
"Oh, no," said Johnny; "I saw him all the time. I got his reflection
from the glass over that picture of the beautiful lady sitting on the
Old Crow Whiskey barrel. That's why I picked out that table."
"My son," cried Danny Randall delightedly, "you're a true sport. You've
got a head, you have!"
"Well," said Johnny, "I figured I'd have to do _something_; I'm
such a rotten shot."