|They had not been playing more than half an hour when Bulldog Carney
felt there was something wrong with the game. Perhaps it was that he was
overtired--that he should have taken advantage of the first bed he had
seen in a month, for he had just come in off the trail to Bucking Horse,
the little, old, worn-out, mining town, perched high in the Rockies on
the Canadian side of the border.
From the very first he had been possessed of a mental unrest not
habitual with him at poker. His adventurous spirit had always found a
risk, a high stake, an absolute sedative; it steadied his nerve--gave
him a concentrated enjoyment of pulled-together mental force. But
to-night there was a scent of evil in the room.
A curious room, too, in which to be playing a game of poker for high
stakes, for it was the Mounted Police shack at Bucking Horse. But
Sergeant Black was away on patrol, or over at Fort Steel, and at such
times the key of the log barracks was left with Seth Long at his hotel,
the Gold Nugget. And it was Seth who had suggested that they play in the
police shack rather than in a room of the hotel.
Carney could not explain to himself why the distrust, why the feeling
that everything was not on the level; but he had a curious conviction
that some one in the party knew every time he drew cards just what was
in his hand; that some one always overmastered him; and this was a new
sensation to Bulldog, for if there ever was a a poker face he owned it.
His steel-gray eyes were as steady, as submerged to his will, as the
green on a forest tree. And as to the science of the game, with its
substructure of nerve, he possessed it _in excelsis_.
He watched each successive dealer of the cards unobtrusively; watched
hand after hand dealt, and knew that every card had been slipped from
the top; that the shuffle had been clean, a whispering riffle without
catch or trick, and the same pack was on the table that they had started
with. He had not lost anything to speak of--and here was the hitch,
the enigma of it. Once he felt that a better hand than his own had been
deliberately laid down when he had raised; another time he had been
called when a raise would have cost him dear, for he was overheld; twice
he had been raised out of it before the draw. He felt that this had been
done simply to keep him out of those hands, and both times the Stranger
had lost heavily.
Seth Long had won; but to suspicion that Seth Long could manipulate a
card was to imagine a glacier dancing a can-can. Seth was all thumbs;
his mind, so to speak, was all thumbs.
Cranford, the Mining Engineer, was different.
He was mentality personified; that curious type, high velocity
delicately balanced, his physical structure of the flexible tenuous
quality of spring steel. He might be a dangerous man if roused. Beneath
the large dome of his thin Italian-pale face were dreamy black eyes. He
was hard to place. He was a mining engineer without a mine to manage.
He was somewhat of a promoter--of restless activity. He was in Bucking
Horse on some sort of a mine deal about which Carney knew nothing. If
he had been a gambler Carney would have considered him the author of the
unrest that hung so evilly over the game.
Shipley was a bird of passage, at present nesting in the Gold Nugget
Hotel. Carney knew of him just as a machinery man, a seller of
compressed-air drills, etc., on commission. He was also a gambler in
mine shares, for during the game he had told of a clean-up he had made
on the "Gray Goose" stock. The Gray Goose Mine was an ill-favored bird,
for its stock had had a crooked manipulation. Shipley's face was not
confidence-inspiring; its general contour suggested the head piece of
a hawk, with its avaricious curve to the beak. His metallic eyes were
querulous; holding little of the human look. His hands had caught
Carney's eye when he came into the shack first and drew off a pair
of gloves. The fingers were long, and flexible, and soft-skinned. The
gloves were the disquieting exhibit, for Carney had known gamblers
who wore kid coverings on their hands habitually to preserve the
sensitiveness of their finger tips. He also had known gamblers who,
ostensibly, had a reputable occupation.
If the Stranger had been winning Carney would not have been so ready to
eliminate him as the villain of the play. He was almost more difficult
to allocate than Cranford. He was well dressed--too well dressed for
unobservation. His name was Hadley, and he was from New York. Beyond the
fact that he had six thousand dollars in Seth Long's iron box, and drank
somewhat persistently, little was known of him. His conversation was
almost entirely limited to a boyish smile, and an invitation to anybody
and everybody to "have a small sensation," said sensation being a drink.
Once his reticence slipped a cog, and he said something about a gold
mine up in the hills that a man, Tacoma Jack, was going to sell him.
That was what the six thousand was for; he was going to look at it with
Tacoma, and if it were as represented, make the first payment when they
returned.
Watching the Stranger riffle the cards and deal them with the quiet easy
grace of a club-man, the sensitive tapering fingers slipping the paste
boards across the table as softly as the falling of flower petals,
Carney was tempted to doubt, but lifting his gray eyes to the smooth
face, the boyish smile laying bare an even set of white teeth, he
changed, muttering inwardly, "Too much class."
It was puzzling; there was something wrong; the game was too erratic for
finished poker players; the spirit of uncertainty possessed them all;
the drawing to fill was unethical, wayward. Even when Carney had
laboriously built up a queen-full, inwardly something whispered, "What's
the use? If there are better cards out you'll lose; if not you'll win
little."
Carney's own fingers were receptive, and he had carefully passed them
over the smooth surface of the cards many times; he could swear there
was no mark of identification, no pin pricks. The pattern on the back of
the cards could contain no geometric key, for it was remarkably simple:
seven blue doves were in flight across a blue background that was cross
hatched and sprayed with leaves.
Then, all at once, he discovered something. The curve of the doves'
wings were all alike--almost. In a dozen hands he had it. It was an
artistic vagary; the right wing of the middle dove was the thousandth
part of an inch more acutely angled on the ace; on the king the right
wing of the second dove to the left.
It would have taken a tuition of probably three days for a man to
memorize the whole system, but it was there--which was the main thing.
And the next most important factor was that somebody at the table knew
the system. Who was it?
Seth had won; but a strong run of luck could have accounted for
that, and Seth as a gambler was a joke. The Stranger, if he were a
super-crook, hiding behind that juvenile smile, would be quite capable
of this interesting chicanery--but he had lost.
Cranford, the Engineer, who had played with the consistent
conservativeness of a man sitting in bad luck, was two hundred loser.
The man of machinery, Shipley, was two hundred to the good; he had
played a forcing game, and but for having had two flushes beaten by Seth
would have been a bigger winner. These two flushes had troubled Carney,
for Shipley had drawn two cards each hand. Either he was in great luck,
or knew something.
Carney debated this extraordinary thing. His courage was so exquisite
that he never made a mistake through over-zealousness in the fomenting
of trouble; the easy way was always the brave way, he believed. In the
West there was no better key to let loose locked-up passion than to
accuse men of cheating at cards; it was the last ditch at which even
cowards drew and shot. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped
his eyes, and dropped it into his lap. At the next hand he looked at his
cards, ran them together on the very edge of the table, dropped one
into the handkerchief, placed the other four, neatly compacted, into the
discard, and said, "I'm out!"
Then he wiped his eyes again with the handkerchief, and put it back in
his pocket.
At the third deal somebody discovered that the pack was shy--a card was
missing. Investigation showed that it was the ace of hearts.
A search on the floor failed to discover the ace.
The irritation caused by this incident was subdued.
"I'll slip over to the hotel and get another pack,"
Seth Long suggested, gathering up the cards and putting them in his
pocket.
From the time Carney had discovered the erratic curve to the doves'
wings he had been wanting to ask, "Who owns these cards?" but had
realized that it would have led to other things. Now the query had
answered itself--they were Seth's, evidently.
This decided Carney, and he said, "I'm tired--I've had a long ride
to-day."