GAMBLERS' OATHS
While the two men were settling the business at hand, Alison had
stood by in silence, looking curiously from one to the other, a
little bewildered, and also a little frightened by the singular turn
of events. But as Dexter faced her, her head went up resolutely, and
she mutely questioned him with her eyes.
"If you don't mind?" he asked with a smile.
"Why, no, not if you wish it," she replied.
"Please," he said. He placed a third stool at the table and laid the
pack of cards before her. Then he coolly turned up the wick of the
hanging lantern, so that the full light fell on the center of the
board. Crill settled his bulk on a stool facing the fireplace, and
Dexter slipped casually into the seat opposite.
The girl picked up the deck, and her slim hands were not quite steady
as she started to shuffle the cards. "Ready?" she asked in a stifled
voice.
"Let 'em go, lady," said the outlaw, and Dexter's fist clenched as he
caught the leering glance across the table.
"Five apiece, isn't it?" Alison inquired without looking up.
"Five," the corporal said--"and one at a time."
Awkwardly she dealt from the pack, and waited with parted lips while
the two men reached for their cards. Crill left his cards face down
on the table, and warily bent up the corners to examine the pips.
Dexter raked his hand towards him, gazed openly at the spots, and
nodded.
"I have them," he remarked, and dropped two cards in front of him.
"Draw three, please."
"One!" muttered Crill. "Throw 'em face up."
The overweighted silence was broken only by the soft, silky sound of
cards slipping off the pack. A three of spades, a ten of clubs and a
queen of hearts fell to the corporal's allotment, and with a quiet
movement he turned over a pair of queens. "Threes," he announced.
Crill stared at a nine of spades that Alison had dropped in front of
him, and sucked in his lips with an audible sound. "Just missed a
flush," he said, and laughed disagreeably. "They're all pink but
that one. First blood for you."
"Pay me," said Dexter.
"You get yours, all right," returned the outlaw between set teeth.
He stirred heavily on his stool, opened his coat, and unbuckled a
sagging chamois belt, which he deposited with a thump on the table.
He unbuttoned one of the belt pockets and brought out a fistful of
twenty-dollar gold pieces. Twenty-five of these were counted out in
a stack and ungraciously shoved at the officer. "There!" he growled.
"Let's see how long you hang on to 'em!"
Alison's flexible fingers again shuffled the deck, and with more
self-possession now, she again distributed the cards. This time
Crill announced openers, and after discarding and filling his hand,
he sat back with an expression of smug contentment. "Three bullets!"
he declared, and his huge hand started across the table towards the
pile of gold he had just lost.
"One moment," interrupted the corporal pleasantly, as he exhibited
his hand. "The queens are standing by me for some reason. There are
three of them again, and a pair of deuces to back them up."
Crill's pink complexion turned a mottled red, and he snorted angrily
through his nostrils; but there was no gainsaying the evidence of
defeat. In ominous silence he reached into his belt and counted up
another glinting pile of double eagles. "Go to it!" he said morosely.
For six hands running Dexter won, and the chamois belt was beginning
to take on a limp and depleted appearance when his luck finally
turned against him. He lost three pots, gained one, forfeited four
more, and at length was reduced to his original stake.
"Let 'em go!" said the outlaw in unlovely gloating as he leaned his
broad elbows over the heap of gold he had raked back to his side of
the table.
Alison glanced sidewise at the corporal, and he thought he saw a
tinge of anxiety in her glowing eyes. "If you please," he invited
serenely.
She riffled the pack, and slowly and deliberately passed out the
cards. Then she straightened on her stool and waited without
breathing while the two players consulted fortune's sending.
"Jacks up," asserted the officer after the draw, as he spread his
cards fan-shape under the flickering lantern rays.
"Beats tens and sixes," admitted Crill, gulping in his fleshy throat.
Dexter took the next pot and the next, was beaten twice, and then
started on a winning streak that eventually stripped the outlaw of
his last gold piece. But when the yellow treasury notes were forced
out on the table, the break came, and the corporal's three thousand
of winnings dribbled gradually away until he had nothing left to
stake but his pledged word to free his prisoner if the next turn of
the game fell against him.
But the hazard of the last chance switched in his favor. He piled up
his winnings to formidable proportions once more, again dropped back
to nothing but a promise, and again started accumulating gold pieces.
So the game went on through the hushed hours of the night, see-sawing
first one direction and then the other, with neither player gaining a
final advantage, until along towards the approach of daylight, when
the luck of the game swung definitely to Dexter's side of the table,
and thereafter remained with him.
The first glimmering of dawn found the three strangely assembled
companions still seated in a tense circle under a dim, sputtering
lantern, watching the fall of cards on the greasy table top. The
corporal had unbuttoned his tunic at the throat, and he had slumped
down on his stool, his legs stretched at full length, and his lean
jaw resting on his hand. His face looked gaunt and haggard in the
yellow light, but his wide-open eyes were keen and watchful, glinting
with feverish brightness. All desire to sleep had left him. On the
table at his elbow was stacked three thousand dollars in gold coin,
and a bundle of crisp treasury notes representing thirteen thousand
more. Crill was down to his last bill.
The murderer's face was not pleasant to look upon. His thick,
bloodless lips had drawn apart, baring his teeth in a poisonous
misshapen smile. The flat nostrils were pinched in at the corners by
muscular constriction, forcing him to breathe through his mouth, and
the skin seemed to have stretched tighter across his bloated face,
accentuating the white, bony hollows of the temples. The eyes that
looked out between puckered rolls of flesh gleamed with ominous
fixity, like hard black beads, never winking, never losing the
malevolence and hatred that dwelt in their frozen depths.
Dexter, by accident, thrust out his leg too far and touched the
murderer's ankle, and he jerked back his foot with shuddering haste.
"I'm five hundred in that note," he said after a chilling silence.
"If I win this time, it's the end."
The outlaw's tongue licked across his sagging lips, but he had no
voice to reply.
"Any time you're ready, Miss Rayne," said the corporal.
A spot of bright color tinged the girl's cheeks, but otherwise she
gave no sign of excitement. She twisted up the sleeve of her frayed
white sweater, and then her slim hands manipulated the deck.
Carefully and precisely, she slipped off the cards, until five lay on
the table before each player. Then, laying the remaining pack beside
her, she sat back to watch.
Dexter scooped up his cards with his left hand, thumbed them apart,
and dropped one from among its companions. "Open," he said mildly.
"I'm filling with the top one."
The outlaw gingerly bent the corners of his cards, and leaned forward
with a stealthy movement to peer under his wrist. "Three!" he said
at length in a thickly muffled voice.
Alison dealt the cards, one to Dexter, three to Crill, and dropped
the deck with a gesture of finality. For a fleeting instant her
glance shifted to the corporal's face, and a ghost of a smile hovered
about her lips.
Dexter's stern features relaxed slightly in response, and he flopped
his cards over on their backs. "I had 'em to start," he
drawled--"nothing except treys and deuces."
Without a word Crill peeled up the edges of the three grimy
pasteboards before him, and then, in an ungovernable fit of rage, he
swept his arm across the table and sent the deck flying. For a
moment he sat scowling in silence, and then he dropped his fat hands
before him and stumbled drunkenly to his feet.
"I suppose you think you've broken me!" he rasped out, with a
horrible effort to control his speech.
Dexter likewise stood up. He stacked the yellow backs in a neat
pile, folded them lengthwise, and slipped the packet into the inside
pocket of his tunic. Then he began thrusting chinking handfuls of
gold into the receptacle of the chamois belt.
"You have the same chance of keeping that stuff as I have of turning
into a preacher," said Crill, his face distorted in a hideous sneer.
The corporal looked up from under one lifted eyebrow. "I beg your
pardon?" he inquired.
"Do you think Stark and his gang are going to let you get away with
that? It's mine, but it also belongs to them." The murderer showed
his teeth in a venomous grin. "Stark and his bunch are going to be
here before you can get away. Or if they should happen to miss you,
they'll hound you down through the woods until you croak on the
trail. You didn't think Stark was going to let anybody cop fifteen
thousand out of his fingers, did you?"
Dexter finished stowing away the gold pieces, and deliberately
fastened the pocket flaps. "I can't manage with one hand," he said
casually to Alison. "Will you help me buckle this belt around my
waist?"
As the girl moved forward to give assistance, he turned abruptly to
Crill. "You had some such mental reservation when you sat down to
play?" he asked. "You knew if I won I wouldn't be allowed to keep my
winnings? In other words, you were counting on Stark from the
beginning?"
"I hope to tell you I was! Do I look crazy to you? I wasn't playing
to lose anything."
"I only wanted to know," said the corporal. "I had a notion that I
might return your money to you--in good season. I don't want
it--wouldn't touch it. Wouldn't soil my hands. I'd about made up my
mind to give it back to you, but that speech of yours has changed
things." His teeth fastened in his lip as he fixed the outlaw with
scornful regard. "I'll tell you what I've decided to do with it
now--having won it fairly," he ended. "I'm going down to the rapids
and dump it overboard."
Crill started as though he had received a blow in the face. "What?"
he gasped. "Fifteen thousand--your money--fifteen thousand dollars?
Why, you wouldn't--"
"To thwart Stark," returned the corporal serenely, "of course I
would."
"But--" Crill drew a sobbing breath, and the madness of terror
suddenly flared into his eyes. "It's the money--Stark--I'd never get
out of these woods alive without the money to pay. He'd leave me to
die, or kill me."
"Of course," agreed Dexter, nodding his head.
Crill stared at him for a single, incredulous instant, and wilted
like a punctured balloon. "Oh, no!" he faltered, choking. He groped
his way back to the table and his hands reached out in fawning
appeal. "Please, Corporal Dexter! You don't--you don't know Stark--"
His voice broke in an agonized whisper, but before he could go on
with his pleading, another voice interrupted from the farther side of
the room.
"My ears are burning. I must have heard my own name." The words cut
sharp and incisive, like rifle shots, from the front of the cabin.
Dexter and Crill and Alison swung around as though they had been
jerked by a string, and they remained like three statues, staring
towards the open doorway.
Framed in the early morning twilight, suave and smiling, stood Owen
Stark.