The Girl of the Golden West (18 page)

The Sheriff followed her up with the declaration:

"I'm plumb crazy about you, Min."

The Girl shrugged her shoulder.

"I could have sworn I saw—I—Oh, you know it's just you for
me—just you, and curse the man you like better. I—I—even yet I
can't get over the queer look in your face when I told you who that
man really was." He stopped and flung his overcoat down on the
floor, and fixing her with a look he demanded: "You don't love him,
do you?"

Again the Girl sent over her shoulder a forced little laugh.

"Who—me?"

The Sheriff's face brightened. Taking a few steps nearer to her,
he hazarded:

"Say, Girl, was your answer final to-night about marrying
me?"

Without turning round the Girl answered coyly:

"I might think it over, Jack."

Instantly the man's passion was aroused. He strode over to her,
put his arms around her and kissed her forcibly.

"I love you, I love you, Minnie!" he cried passionately.

In the struggle that followed, the Girl's eyes fell on the
bottle on the mantel. With a cry she seized it and raised it
threateningly over her head. Another second, however, she sank down
upon a chair and began to sob, her face buried in her hands.

Rance regarded her coldly; at last he gave vent to a mirthless
laugh, the nasty laugh of a man whose vanity is hurt.

"So, it's as bad as that," he sneered. "I didn't quite realise
it. I'm much obliged to you. Good-night." He snatched up his coat,
hesitated, then repeated a little less angrily than before:
"Good-night!"

But the Girl, with her face still hidden, made no answer. For a
moment he watched the crouching form, the quivering shoulders, then
asked, with sudden and unwonted gentleness:

"Can't you say good-night to me, Girl!"

Slowly the Girl rose to her feet and faced him, aversion and
pity struggling for mastery. Then, as she noted the spot where he
was now standing, his great height bringing him so near to the low
boards of the loft where her lover was lying that it seemed as
though he must hear the wounded man's breathing, all other feelings
were swept away by overwhelming fear. With the one thought that she
must get rid of him,—do anything, say anything, but get rid of him
quickly, she forced herself forward, with extended hand, and said
in a voice that held out new promise:

"Good-night. Jack Rance,—good-night!"

Rance seized the hand with an almost fierce gladness in both his
own, his keen glance hungrily striving to read her face. Then,
suddenly, he released her, drawing back his hand with a quick
sharpness.

"Why, look at my hand! There's blood on it!" he said.

And even as he spoke, under the yellow flare of the lamp, the
Girl saw a second drop of blood fall at her feet. Like a flash, the
terrible significance of it came upon her. Only by self-violence
could she keep her glance from rising, tell-tale, to the boards
above.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she heard herself saying contritely, all the
time desperately groping to invent a reason; at length, she added
futilely: "I must have scratched you."

Rance looked puzzled, staring at the spatter of red as though
hypnotised.

"No, there's no scratch there," he contended, wiping off the
blood with his handkerchief.

"Oh, yes, there is," insisted the Girl tremulously; "that is,
there will be in the mornin'. You'll see in the mornin' that
there'll be—" She stopped and stared in frozen terror at the
sinister face of the Sheriff, who was coolly watching his
handkerchief turn from white to red under the slow rain of blood
from the loft above.

"Oho!" he emitted sardonically, stepping back and pointing his
gun towards the loft. "So, he's up there!"

The Girl's fingers clutched his arm, dragging desperately.

"No, he isn't, Jack—no, he isn't!" she iterated in blind,
mechanical denial.

With an abrupt movement, Rance flung her violently from him,
made a grab at the suspended ladder and lowered it into position;
then, deaf to the Girl's pleadings, harshly ordered Johnson to come
down, meanwhile covering the source of the blood-drops with his
gun.

"Oh, wait,—wait a minute!" begged the Girl helplessly. What
would happen if he couldn't obey the summons? He had spent himself
in his climb to safety. Perhaps he was unconscious, slowly bleeding
to death! But even as she tortured herself with fears, the boards
above creaked as though a heavy body was dragging itself slowly
across them. Johnson was evidently doing his best to reach the top
of the ladder; but he did not move quickly enough to suit the
Sheriff.

"Come down, or I'll—"

"Oh, just a minute, Jack, just a minute!" broke in the Girl
frantically. "Don't shoot!—Don't you see he's tryin' to—?"

"Come down here, Mr. Johnson!" reiterated the Sheriff, with a
face inhuman as a fiend.

The Girl clenched her hands, heedless of the nails cutting into
her palms: "Won't you wait a moment,—please, wait, Jack!"

"Wait? What for?" the Sheriff flung at her brutally, his finger
twitching on the trigger.

The Girl's lips parted to answer, then closed again dumbly,—for
it was then that she saw the boots, then the legs of the road agent
slide uncertainly through the open trap, fumble clumsily for the
rungs of the ladder, then slip and stumble as the weight of the
following body came upon them while the weak fingers strained
desperately for a hold. The whole heart and soul and mind of the
Girl seemed to be reaching out impotently to give her lover
strength, to hurry him down fast enough to forestall a shot from
the Sheriff. It seemed hours until the road agent reached the
bottom of the ladder, then lurched with unseeing eyes to a chair
and, finally, fell forward limply, with his arms and head resting
on the table. Still dumb with dread, the Girl watched Rance slowly
circle round the wounded man; it was not until the Sheriff returned
his pistol to its holster that she breathed freely again.

"So, you dropped into The Polka to-night to play a little game
of poker? Funny how things change about in an hour or two!" Rance
chuckled mirthlessly; it seemed to suit his sardonic humour to
taunt his helpless rival. "You think you can play poker,—that's
your conviction, is it? Well, you can play freeze-out as to your
chances, Mr. Johnson of Sacramento. Come, speak up,—it's shooting
or the tree,—which shall it be?"

Goaded beyond endurance by Rance's taunting of the unconscious
man, the Girl, fumbling in her bosom for her pistol, turned upon
him in a sudden, cold fury:

"You better stop that laughin', Jack Rance, or I'll send you to
finish it in some place where things ain't so funny."

Something in the Girl's altered tone so struck the Sheriff that
he obeyed her. He said nothing, but on his lips were the words, "By
Heaven, the Girl means it!" and his eyes showed a smouldering
admiration.

"He doesn't hear you,—he's out of it. But me—me—I hear you—I
ain't out of it," the Girl went on in compelling tones. "You're a
gambler; he was, too; well, so am I." She crossed deliberately to
the bureau, and laid her pistol away in the drawer, Rance meanwhile
eyeing her with puzzled interest. Returning, she went on,
incisively as a whip lash:

"I live on chance money, drink money, card money, saloon money.
We're gamblers,—we're all gamblers!" She paused, an odd expression
coming over her face,—an expression that baffled Rance's power to
read. Presently she resumed: "Now, you asked me to-night if my
answer was final,—well, here's your chance. I'll play you the
game,—straight poker. It's two out o' three for me. Hatin' the
sight o' you, it's the nearest chance you'll ever get for me."

"Do you mean—" began Rance, his hands resting on the table, his
hawk-like glance burning into her very thoughts.

"Yes, with a wife in Noo Orleans all right," she interrupted him
feverishly. "If you're lucky,—you'll git 'im an' me. But if you
lose,—this man settin' between us is mine—mine to do with as I
please, an' you shut up an' lose like a gentleman."

"You must be crazy about him!" The words seemed wrung from the
Sheriff against his will.

"That's my business!" came like a knife-cut from the Girl.

"Do you know you're talkin' to the Sheriff?"

"I'm talkin' to Jack Rance, the gambler," she amended
evenly.

"You're right,—and he's just fool enough to take you up,"
returned Rance with sudden decision. He looked around him for a
chair; there was one near the table, and the Girl handed it to him.
With one hand he swung it into place before the table, while with
the other he jerked off the table-cover, and flung it across the
room. Johnson neither moved nor groaned, as the edge slid from
beneath his nerveless arms.

"You and the cyards have got into my blood. I'll take you up,"
he said, seating himself.

"Your word," demanded the Girl, leaning over the table, but
still standing.

"I can lose like a gentleman," returned Rance curtly; then, with
a swift seizure of her hand, he continued tensely, in tones that
made the Girl shrink and whiten, "I'm hungry for you, Min, and if I
win, I'll take it out on you as long as I have breath."

A moment later, the Girl had freed her hand from his clasp, and
was saying evenly, "Fix the lamp." And while the Sheriff was
adjusting the wick that had begun to flare up smokily, she swiftly
left the room, saying casually over her shoulder that she was going
to fetch something from the closet.

"What you goin' to get?" he called after her suspiciously. The
Girl made no reply. Rance made no movement to follow her, but
instead drew a pack of cards from his pocket and began to shuffle
them with practiced carelessness. But when a minute had passed and
the girl had not returned, he called once more, with growing
impatience, to know what was keeping her.

"I'm jest gettin' the cards an' kind o' steadyin' my nerves,"
she answered somewhat queerly through the doorway. The next moment
she had returned, quickly closing the closet door behind her, blew
out her candle, and laying a pack of cards upon the table, said
significantly:

"We'll use a fresh deck. There's a good deal depends on this,
Jack." She seated herself opposite the Sheriff and so close to the
unconscious form of the man she loved that from time to time her
left arm brushed his shoulder.

Rance, without protest other than a shrug, took up his own deck
of cards, wrapped them in a handkerchief, and stowed them away in
his pocket. It was the Girl who spoke first:

"Are you ready?"

"Ready? Yes. I'm ready. Cut for deal."

With unfaltering fingers, the Girl cut. Of the man beside her,
dead or dying, she must not, dared not think. For the moment she
had become one incarnate purpose: to win, to win at any
cost,—nothing else mattered.

Rance won the deal; and taking up the pack he asked, as he
shuffled:

"A case of show-down?"

"Show-down."

"Cut!" once more peremptorily from Rance; and then, when she had
cut, one question more: "Best two out of three?"

"Best two out of three." Swift, staccato sentences, like the
rapid crossing of swords, the first preliminary interchange of
strokes before the true duel begins.

Rance dealt the cards. Before either looked at them, he glanced
across at the Girl and asked scornfully, perhaps enviously:

"What do you see in him?"

"What do you see in me?" she flashed back instantly, as she
picked up her cards; and then: "What have you got?"

"King high," declared the gambler.

"King high here," echoed the Girl.

"Jack next," and he showed his hand.

"Queen next," and the Girl showed hers.

"You've got it," conceded the gambler, easily. Then, in another
tone, "but you're making a mistake—"

"If I am, it's my mistake! Cut!"

Rance cut the cards. The Girl dealt them steadily. Then,

"What have you got?" she asked.

"One pair,—aces. What have you?"

"Nothing," throwing her cards upon the table.

With just a flicker of a smile, the Sheriff once more gathered
up the pack, saying smoothly:

"Even now,—we're even."

"It's the next hand that tells, Jack, ain't it?"

"Yes."

"It's the next hand that tells me,—I'm awfully sorry,—" the
words seemed to come awkwardly; her glance was troubled, almost
contrite, "at any rate, I want to say jest now that no matter how
it comes out—"

"Cut!" interjected Rance mechanically.

"—that I'll always think of you the best I can," completed the
Girl with much feeling. "An' I want you to do the same for me."

Silently, inscrutably, the gambler dealt the ten cards, one by
one. But as the Girl started to draw hers toward her, his long,
thin fingers reached across once more and closed not ungently upon
hand and cards.

"The last hand, Girl!" he reminded her. "And I've a feeling that
I win,—that in one minute I'll hold you in my arms." And still
covering her fingers with his own, he stole a glance at his
cards.

"I win," he announced, briefly, his eyes alone betraying the
inward fever. He dropped the cards before her on the table. "Three
kings,—and the 
last hand
!"

Suddenly, as though some inward cord had snapped under the
strain, the Girl collapsed. Limply she slid downward in her chair,
one groping hand straying aimlessly to her forehead, then dropping
of its own weight. "Quick, Jack,—I'm ill,—git me somethin'!" The
voice trailed off to nothingness as the drooping eyelids
closed.

In real consternation, the Sheriff sprang to his feet. In one
sweeping glance his alert eye caught the whisky bottle upon the
mantel. "All right, Girl, I'll fix you in no time," he said
cheeringly over his shoulder. But where the deuce did she keep her
tumblers? The next minute he was groping for them in the dark of
the adjoining closet and softly cursing himself for his own
slowness.