Chapter XXXIV: 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.