Border Legion (1990) (37 page)

"Let them drink, Kells," declared Gulden. "We'll get their dust quicker. Then we can have our game."

Kells made no more comment. The game went on and the aspect of it changed. When Kells himself began to drink, seemingly unconscious of the fact, Joan's dread increased greatly, and, leaving the peep- hole, she lay back upon the bed. Always a sword had hung over her head. Time after time by some fortunate circumstance or by courage or wit or by an act of Providence she had escaped what strangely menaced. Would she escape it again? For she felt the catastrophe coming. Did Jim recognize that fact? Remembering the look on his face, she was assured that he did. Then he would be quick to seize upon any possible chance to get her away; and always he would be between her and those bandits. At most, then, she had only death to fear--death that he would mercifully deal to her if the worst came.

And as she lay there listening to the slow-rising murmur of the gamblers, with her thought growing clearer, she realized it was love of Jim and fear for him--fear that he would lose her--that caused her cold dread and the laboring breath and the weighted heart. She had cost Jim this terrible experience and she wanted to make up to him for it, to give him herself and all her life.

Joan lay there a long time, thinking and suffering, while the strange, morbid desire to watch Kells and Gulden grew stronger and stronger, until it was irresistible. Her fate, her life, lay in the balance between these two men. She divined that.

She returned to her vantage-point, and as she glanced through she vibrated to a shock. The change that had begun subtly, intangibly, was now a terrible and glaring difference. That great quantity of gold, the equal chance of every gambler, the marvelous possibilities presented to evil minds, and the hell that hid in that black bottle-

-these had made playthings of every bandit except Gulden. He was exactly the same as ever. But to see the others sent a chill of ice along Joan's veins. Kells was white and rapt. Plain to see--he had won! Blicky was wild with rage. Jesse Smith sat darker, grimmer, but no longer cool. There was hate in the glance he fastened upon Kells as he bet. Beady Jones and Braverman showed an inflamed and impotent eagerness to take their turn. Budd sat in the game now, and his face wore a terrible look. Joan could not tell what passion drove him, but she knew he was a loser. Pike and Bossert likewise were losers, and stood apart, sullen, watching with sick, jealous rage. Jim Cleve had reacted to the strain, and he was white, with nervous, clutching hands and piercing glances. And the game went on with violent slap of card or pound of fist upon the table, with the slide of a bag of gold or the little, sodden thump of its weight, with savage curses at loss and strange, raw exultation at gain, with hurry and violence--more than all, with the wildness of the hour and the wildness of these men, drawing closer and closer to the dread climax that from the beginning had been foreshadowed.

Suddenly Budd rose and bent over the table, his cards clutched in a shaking hand, his face distorted and malignant, his eyes burning at Kells. Passionately he threw the cards down.

"There!" he yelled, hoarsely, and he stilled the noise.

"No good!" replied Kells, tauntingly. "Is there any other game you play?"

Budd bent low to see the cards in Kells's hand, and then, straightening his form, he gazed with haggard fury at the winner.

"You've done me! ... I'm cleaned--I'm busted!" he raved.

"You were easy. Get out of the game," replied Kells, with an exultant contempt. It was not the passion of play that now obsessed him, but the passion of success.

"I said you done me," burst out Budd, insanely. "You're slick with the cards!"

The accusation acted like magic to silence the bandits, to check movement, to clamp the situation. Kells was white and radiant; he seemed careless and nonchalant.

"All right, Budd," he replied, but his tone did not suit his strange look. "That's three times for you!"

Swift as a flash he shot. Budd fell over Gulden, and the giant with one sweep of his arm threw the stricken bandit off. Budd fell heavily, and neither moved nor spoke.

"Pass me the bottle," went on Kells, a little hoarse shakiness in his voice. "And go on with the game!"

"Can I set in now?" asked Beady Jones, eagerly.

"You and Jack wait. This's getting to be all between Kells an' me," said Gulden.

"We've sure got Blicky done!" exclaimed Kells. There was something taunting about the leader's words. He did not care for the gold. It was the fight to win. It was his egotism.

"Make this game faster an' bigger, will you?" retorted Blicky, who seemed inflamed.

"Boss, a little luck makes you lofty," interposed Jesse Smith in dark disdain. "Pretty soon you'll show yellow clear to your gizzard!"

The gold lay there on the table. It was only a means to an end. It signified nothing. The evil, the terrible greed, the brutal lust, were in the hearts of the men. And hate, liberated, rampant, stalked out unconcealed, ready for blood.

"Gulden, change the game to suit these gents," taunted Kells.

"Double stakes. Cut the cards!" boomed the giant, instantly.

Blicky lasted only a few more deals of the cards, then he rose, loser of all his share, a passionate and venomous bandit, ready for murder. But he kept his mouth shut and looked wary.

"Boss, can't we set in now?" demanded Beady Jones.

"Say, Beady, you're in a hurry to lose your gold," replied Kells.

"Wait till I beat Gulden and Smith."

Luck turned against Jesse Smith. He lost first to Gulden, then to Kells, and presently he rose, a beaten, but game man. He reached for the whisky.

"Fellers, I reckon I can enjoy Kells's yellow streak more when I ain't playin'," he said.

The bandit leader eyed Smith with awakening rancor, as if a persistent hint of inevitable weakness had its effect. He frowned, and the radiance left his face for the forbidding cast.

"Stand around, you men, and see some real gambling," he said.

At this moment in the contest Kells had twice as much gold as Gulden, there being a huge mound of little buckskin sacks in front of him.

They began staking a bag at a time and cutting the cards, the higher card winning. Kells won the first four cuts. How strangely that radiance returned to his face! Then he lost and won, and won and lost. The other bandits grouped around, only Jones and Braverman now manifesting any eagerness. All were silent. There were suspense, strain, mystery in the air. Gulden began to win consistently and Kells began to change. It was a sad and strange sight to see this strong man's nerve and force gradually deteriorate under a fickle fortune. The time came when half the amount he had collected was in front of Gulden. The giant was imperturbable. He might have been a huge animal, or destiny, or something inhuman that knew the run of luck would be his. As he had taken losses so he greeted gains--with absolute indifference. While Kells's hands shook the giant's were steady and slow and sure. It must have been hateful to Kells--this faculty of Gulden's to meet victory identically as he met defeat.

The test of a great gambler's nerve was not in sustaining loss, but in remaining cool with victory. The fact grew manifest that Gulden was a great gambler and Kells was not. The giant had no emotion, no imagination. And Kells seemed all fire and whirling hope and despair and rage. His vanity began to bleed to death. This game was the deciding contest. The scornful and exultant looks of his men proved how that game was going. Again and again Kells's unsteady hand reached for one of the whisky bottles. Once with a low curse he threw an empty bottle through the door.

"Hey, boss, ain't it about time--" began Jesse Smith. But whatever he had intended to say, he thought better of, withholding it.

Kells's sudden look and movement were unmistakable.

The goddess of chance, as false as the bandit's vanity, played with him. He brightened under a streak of winning. But just as his face began to lose its haggard shade, to glow, the tide again turned against him. He lost and lost, and with each bag of gold-dust went something of his spirit. And when he was reduced to his original share he indeed showed that yellow streak which Jesse Smith had attributed to him. The bandit's effort to pull himself together, to be a man before that scornful gang, was pitiful and futile. He might have been magnificent, confronted by other issues, of peril or circumstance, but there he was craven. He was a man who should never have gambled.

One after the other, in quick succession, he lost the two bags of gold, his original share. He had lost utterly. Gulden had the great heap of dirty little buckskin sacks, so significant of the hidden power within.

Joan was amazed and sick at sight of Kells then, and if it had been possible she would have withdrawn her gaze. But she was chained there. The catastrophe was imminent.

Kells stared down at the gold. His jaw worked convulsively. He had the eyes of a trapped wolf. Yet he seemed not wholly to comprehend what had happened to him.

Gulden rose, slow, heavy, ponderous, to tower over his heap of gold.

Then this giant, who had never shown an emotion, suddenly, terribly blazed.

"One more bet--a cut of the cards--my whole stake of gold!" he boomed.

The bandits took a stride forward as one man, then stood breathless.

"One bet!" echoed Kells, aghast. "Against what?"

"AGAINST THE GIRL!"

Joan sank against the wall, a piercing torture in her breast. She clutched the logs to keep from falling. So that was the impending horror. She could not unrivet her eyes from the paralyzed Kells, yet she seemed to see Jim Cleve leap straight up, and then stand, equally motionless, with Kells.

"One cut of the cards--my gold against the girl!" boomed the giant.

Kells made a movement as if to go for his gun. But it failed. His hand was a shaking leaf.

"You always bragged on your nerve!" went on Gulden, mercilessly.

"You're the gambler of the border! ... Come on."

Kells stood there, his doom upon him. Plain to all was his torture, his weakness, his defeat. It seemed that with all his soul he combated something, only to fail.

"ONE CUT--MY GOLD AGAINST YOUR GIRL!"

The gang burst into one concerted taunt. Like snarling, bristling wolves they craned their necks at Kells.

"No, damn--you! No!" cried Kells, in hoarse, broken fury. With both hands before him he seemed to push back the sight of that gold, of Gulden, of the malignant men, of a horrible temptation.

"Reckon, boss, thet yellow streak is operatin'!" sang out Jesse Smith.

But neither gold, nor Gulden, nor men, nor taunts ruined Kells at this perhaps most critical crisis of his life. It was the mad, clutching, terrible opportunity presented. It was the strange and terrible nature of the wager. What vision might have flitted through the gambler's mind! But neither vision of loss nor gain moved him.

There, licking like a flame at his soul, consuming the good in him at a blast, overpowering his love, was the strange and magnificent gamble. He could not resist it.

Speechless, with a motion of his hand, he signified his willingness.

"Blicky, shuffle the cards," boomed Gulden.

Blicky did so and dropped the deck with a slap in the middle of the table.

"Cut!" called Gulden.

Kells's shaking hand crept toward the deck.

Jim Cleve suddenly appeared to regain power of speech and motion.

"Don't, Kells, don't!" he cried, piercingly, as he leaped forward.

But neither Kells nor the others heard him, or even saw his movement.

Kells cut the deck. He held up his card. It was the king of hearts.

What a transformation! His face might have been that of a corpse suddenly revivified with glorious, leaping life.

"Only an ace can beat thet!" muttered Jesse Smith into the silence.

Gulden reached for the deck as if he knew every card left was an ace. His cavernous eyes gloated over Kells. He cut, and before he looked himself he let Kells see the card.

"You can't beat my streak!" he boomed.

Then he threw the card upon the table. It was the ace of spades.

Kells seemed to shrivel, to totter, to sink. Jim Cleve went quickly to him, held to him.

"Kells, go say good--by to your girl!" boomed Gulden. "I'll want her pretty soon. ... Come on, you Beady and Braverman. Here's your chance to get even."

Gulden resumed his seat, and the two bandits invited to play were eager to comply, while the others pressed close once more.

Jim Cleve led the dazed Kells toward the door into Joan's cabin. For Joan just then all seemed to be dark.

When she recovered she was lying on the bed and Jim was bending over her. He looked frantic with grief and desperation and fear.

"Jim! Jim!" she moaned, grasping his hands. He helped her to sit up.

Then she saw Kells standing there. He looked abject, stupid, drunk.

Yet evidently he had begun to comprehend the meaning of his deed.

"Kells," began Cleve, in low, hoarse tones, as he stepped forward with a gun. "I'm going to kill you--and Joan--and myself!"