Late in the night they were still playing without a change in their
positions. Em still perspired; but Mr. Ottinger no longer protruded his
tongue, a sullen anger was evident in his every move; Jake's affable flow
of conversation was hushed; Gordon's face set. It was, indisputably, not
funny--he had won nearly two hundred dollars. "Make it ten?" Jake queried.
The others nodded. Now Gordon had two hundred and twenty dollars; an
extraordinary, overwhelming luck presided over his cards, he won more
frequently than the other three together. A tense silence enveloped the
latter: they shuffled, demanded cards, threw down their hands, in a
hurried, disorganized fashion. They glanced, each at the other, swiftly;
it was evident that a common idea, other than the game, possessed them.
Jake hovered a breath longer than necessary over the bottle, then pressed
a drink upon Gordon. He refused; this, he recognized, was not a time for
dissipation; he needed every faculty.
Two hundred and sixty dollars. The air of suppression, of tension,
increased. Gordon's only concern now was to get away, to take the money
with him.
Em shuffled in a slipshod, inattentive manner; Mr. Ottinger opened his
hand boldly, faced his bad luck with a stony eye; Jake labored under a
painful excitement, obviously not connected with his losses; his long,
waxy fingers quivered, a feverish point of fire flickered in either
cadaverous cheek; his eyes glowed between hollow, sunken temples. "Four,"
he demanded, with shaking lips. Mr. Ottinger rapped out a request for one.
"I'm satisfied," Gordon said.
"Don't that sucker beat hell!" Em declared, the solicitous manner that,
earlier in the evening, had marked her manner toward Gordon, carelessly
discarded. "I'm taking three." A sudden, visible boredom fell upon her as
she glanced at her filled hand. "Leave us double it," she remarked. Gordon
nodded, and she threw her hand upon the table; it held four nines. She
reached her fat, chalky arm toward the money, but Gordon was before her.
"Four queens," he shot out, grasping the crumpled bills.
Em cursed; then followed a short, awkward silence. It was Ottinger's deal,
but he did not pick up the scattered cards. Gordon gathered himself
alertly, measuring the distance to the door. "I've got enough," he
remarked; "I'm going to quit."
"You got enough, all right," Em agreed. "Now, how'd you like to have a
real good time?" She disposed herself upon her elbow, so that the sagging
bulk of her body was emphasized through its straining apparel; one leg,
incredible, leviathan, was largely visible.
"I've had enough," Gordon repeated; "I'll be moving."
Em rose quickly, losing her air of coquetry. Gordon was facing the men,
and was unprepared for the heavy blow she dealt upon the back of his neck.
"Hang it on him, Otty!" she cried excitedly.
Mr. Ottinger shoved the card table from his path. It was now evident that
it was, precisely, to "hang it on" whoever might be elected for that
delicate attention which formed Otty's purpose, profession, preoccupation,
in life. He was, for a heavy man, active; and, before Gordon Makimmon
could put out a protective arm, he returned the latter to the
perpendicular with a jarring blow on the chin. Jake whipped out from a
place of concealment on his person a plaited leather weapon with a
globular end.
It was Jake, Gordon instinctively knew, who threatened him most; he could
easily stop the hulking shape before him. He regained his poise, and
returned blow for blow with Mr. Ottinger; neither man guarded, both were
solely intent upon marking, crippling, the other. A chair fell, sliding
across the floor; a washstand collapsed with a splintering crash of china,
a miniature flood. Em stood on the outskirts of the conflict, armed with
the whisky bottle; Jake crouched watchful with the leather club. Gordon
cut his opponent's face with short, vicious jabs; he was, as customary,
cold--he saw clearly where every blow fell; he saw Otty's nose grotesquely
shapeless and blackened; he felt Otty's teeth cut the skin of his knuckles
and break off; he heard his involuntary gasp as he struck him a
hammer-like blow over the heart.
Mr. Ottinger, in return, hit him frequently and with effect. Gordon was
conscious of a warm, gummy tide spreading over his face, he saw with
difficulty through rapidly closing eyes. "For Cri's sake," Otty gasped,
"get to him, the town'll be on us."
Em made an ineffectual lunge with the bottle. Gordon swung the point of
his elbow into her side, and she sat on the bed with a "G-G-God!" Jake hit
him with the club on the shoulder blade; numbness radiated from the struck
point; there was a loss of power in the corresponding arm. Jake hit him
again, and a stabbing pain entered his side and stayed apparently tangled
in splintered bone. He paused for a moment, and all three fell upon him,
beating, clubbing, kicking. He fought on, now rapidly losing power. The
woman threw herself on his back, forced him to his knees. "Won't none of
you do for him?" she complained hysterically. She pressed his head into
her breast, and Mr. Ottinger hit him below and just back of his ear.
Gordon slipped out full length on the floor.
He was waveringly conscious, but he had lost all interest, all sense of
personal connection, with the proceedings. He dully watched Ottinger draw
back, tenderly fingering his damaged features; he saw Em breathing
stormily, empurpled. Jake, with the crimson flames in his long, pallid
mask, the white saliva flecking his jaw, hung over him with a glassy,
intent stare.
"Get the stuff," the practical Ottinger urged; "it's the stuff we're
after. Don't go bug again."
"Jake don't hear you," Em told him, "he's off. I'm glad the fella's going
to be fixed, he jolted me something fierce."
Jake swung the little, flexuous club softly against his palm, and Gordon
suddenly realized that the cripple intended to kill him.--That was the
lust which transfigured the gambler's countenance, which lit the fires in
the deathly cheeks, set the long fingers shaking. Gordon considered the
idea, and, obscurely, it troubled him, moved him a space from his apathy.
Instinctively, in response to a sudden movement of the figure above him,
he drew his arm up in front of his head; and an intolerable pain shot up
through his shoulder and flared, blindingly, in his eyes. It pierced his
indifference, set in motion his reason, his memory; he realized the
necessity, the danger, of his predicament ... the money!--he must guard
it, take it back with him. Above, in a heated, orange mist, the woman's
face loomed blank and inhuman; farther back Mr. Ottinger's features were
indistinctly visible.
He must rise....
His groping hand caught hold of the rung of the chair, and, with herculean
labor, he turned and raised himself a fraction from the floor. Jake
directed a hasty blow at his head that missed him altogether. His other
hand caught the chair, and he dragged himself dizzily into a kneeling
posture. A sudden change swept over the three above him.
"Nail him where he is!" Em cried excitedly; "he's getting up on you."
Gordon's hands moved uncertainly upward on the chair; his knees rose from
the floor. A shower of blows fell on him; the woman beat him with her
pudgy fists; Mr. Ottinger was kicking at him; Jake was weeping, and
endeavoring to get room in which to swing his club.
Gordon had one foot on the floor.
"Give me a chance at him," Jake implored; "give me a chance. God, if I had
a knife."
If they took away the chair, Gordon knew, he was lost. He clung to it;
pressed his breast against it; crept upward by means of it, slowly,
slowly, through a storm of battering hands. It seemed to him that, in
rising, he was shouldering aside the entire weight, the forces, of a
universe, bent on his destruction, and against which he was determined to
prevail. It was as though his will, the vitality which animated him, which
was his soul, stood aside from his beaten and suffering body, and, with a
cold, a cruel, detachment, commanded it upright.
The woman's bulk got in Jake's way, and he struck her across the eyes with
the back of his hand, consigning her to eternal hell. Mr. Ottinger,
confused by the irregularity of the turmoil, worked inefficiently,
swinging at random his hard fists, kicking impartially.
Gordon now had both feet upon the floor; he straightened up. For a breath
the three stood motionless, livid; and in that instant his hand fell upon
the door knob, he staggered back into the hall, carrying with him a vision
of his brocaded tie lying upon the floor.