Читать книгу The Maverick Queen - Zane Grey - Страница 3

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It was almost dark, that day in early June, when the stage rolled down off the Wind River Mountains into the notorious mining town of South Pass, Wyoming. Lincoln Bradway, a cowboy more at home on a horse than in a vehicle, alighted stiff and cramped from his long ride, glad indeed to reach his destination. He had not liked either the curious male passengers or the hard-featured women. With his heavy bag he stepped down upon the board sidewalk, and asked a passer-by if there was a hotel in town.

“South Pass brags of twenty hotels, stranger, with a saloon to match each one of ’em. Take your choice,” returned the man, with a laugh that derided Bradway’s ignorance.

Bradway looked down a long wide street, lined by two straggling rows of dim yellow lights. He heard the tramp and shuffle of many boots, the murmur of voices, loud laughs, the clink of glasses and coins, the whirr of roulette wheels. The sidewalks were crowded. The visitor sensed an atmosphere similar to that of the Kansas border towns, to Abiline and Hays City. They had passed their wild prime, but South Pass was in its heyday. The newcomer went by a number of hotel signs garish on high board fronts, and finally found a lodginghouse away from the center of town. The proprietor was a pleasant-faced and hospitable woman who asked for her fee in advance. The clean little room, smelling of fresh-cut pine lumber, satisfied Lincoln, and he paid for a week’s rent. The keen-eyed woman observed his roll of greenbacks and favored him with a more attentive look.

“Where you hail from, cowboy?” she asked.

“Nebraska. How’re things here?”

“Humph! Lively enough without any more fire-eyed cowboys. You want work?”

“Not much.”

“I reckoned that. Cowboys with a roll like you just flashed usually don’t want work till the roll’s gone, and in South Pass that’ll not take long. I advise you to keep it hid.”

“Thanks for the hunch, lady, but I can look out for myself.”

“I didn’t miss the way you pack that big gun of yours.”

“Gosh! you have sharp eyes, lady, and handsome ones, too,” he replied mildly. “I’m a starved hombre. Where’ll I eat?”

The landlady looked pleased. “Try the Chink, half a block in town,” she offered. “He can cook, and cowboys patronize him. China Bar, he calls his shack, but he doesn’t sell any hard liquor.”

“Many of my kind hereabouts, lady?” continued the tall Nebraskan, casually.

“Not of your kind, cowboy,” she retorted, and both words and look appeared to be complimentary. “But there are a plenty of cowboys in western Wyoming. Outfits all down the Sweetwater River, a few big, and lots of little ones. It’s the coming cattle country.”

“So I was told.... Lady, did you ever hear of a cowboy named Jimmy Weston?”

“I should say so, stranger! Jimmy used to stay with me. A mighty nice boy. Pity he ... say, who might you happen to be?”

“Well, I might happen to be anybody. But it’s enough to say that Jimmy was my pard.”

“Pard? ... Could you be the pard he was always bragging about? Linc something?” she queried, without troubling to hide her keen interest.

“I am the pard, lady, Lincoln Bradway. And I’ve come out here to find out what happened to Jimmy.”

“He’s dead.”

“Yes, I know that. Word came to us back in Nebraska. But I’m not satisfied with what I heard.”

“If you’re smart, stranger, you’ll keep quiet about your curiosity,” she rejoined, her tone and manner altering subtly.

“Thanks, lady. I don’t aim to make any sudden noise. But when I do it’ll be loud.... Were you a friend of Jimmy’s? Can you tell me anything?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m sorry. You spoke sort of kindly of him. I had a feeling ...”

“Stranger, I liked Jimmy Weston. He was just about the salt of the earth, and it was hard for me to believe he was shot in a card game, for cheating.”

Bradway made a swift, angry gesture that silenced the woman. He leaned toward her. “Lady, that is a damned lie. Jimmy Weston never turned a crooked card in his life. I know it. His friends back there would swear to it, and I’m out here to get at the bottom of this deal, whatever it is.”

“Everybody in South Pass believes the—the talk,” said the woman nervously.

“Did you?”

Her hurried nod did not deceive her lodger. He left her then, convinced that she knew more than she cared to divulge. It might be well to cultivate her and win her confidence. He was playing in luck. Here at his very arrival in South Pass he had hit upon something that concerned his old friend, in whose interest he had journeyed so far. Lincoln Bradway was not too surprised, however. In countless previous situations, where he had been deeply concerned, things had gravitated his way, right from the start. Many a time he and Jimmy Weston in the old days had played their hunches and pressed their luck together. Now Jimmy, wild youngster that he had been, was gone. Bradway looked away from the silent woman, out of the window. Slowly his face hardened and a shadow seemed to darken his gray eyes. He had a job to do. Jim Weston’s name had to be cleared. And someone had to answer for his death. Well, time was awasting.

Bradway found the Chinaman’s place, a tiny restaurant with a counter and a bench, and several tables covered with oilcloth. Three cowboys were emerging as the Nebraskan approached the door. Lincoln stepped aside into the shadow as they came out. They smelled of horses and dust and rum, mixed with an odor that it took a moment for him to recognize. It was the aroma of sage. The third and last cowboy was tall, lean and set of face, tawny-haired, a ragged, genuine gun-packing range rider, if Linc had ever seen one.

“Aw, Mel, you’re a sorehaid,” growled one of his companions, a short bow-legged youth, somewhat unsteady from an oversupply of liquor. “Lucy gave you a raw deal, and no wonder. But ’cause of that an’ you bein’ sore ain’t no reason why Monty heah an’ me cain’t open our mouths.”

“Hell, it ain’t!” flashed the cowboy called Mel, fiercely. “Blab all you want, Smeade, but not about that. Not heah in town!”

“An’ why’n the hell not? Jest among ourselves. You make me sick. Even if it’s never been admitted among us where an’ for why them mavericks went, we know, an’ you know damn wal, Mel Thatcher, that they ...”

“No! I never admitted it,” interrupted Thatcher, “There’s some things you can’t talk about on this range. Go on, you fool, and you’ll get what Jimmy Weston got!”

They passed on down the sidewalk, leaving Lincoln standing there in the shadow, transfixed at the mention of Jimmy’s name. He would recognize Mel Thatcher when he met him again.

Profoundly thoughtful, the Nebraskan went into the restaurant. While waiting for his meal he tried to separate into detail the things he had heard. The name Lucy? That name had occurred more than once in Jimmy’s infrequent letters. Whoever that girl was, his old pard had been sweet on her. And somehow she had given this cowboy Thatcher a raw deal. Perhaps she had given Jimmy the same. Why? Maybe she was no good. That was one of the things he would have to investigate. Then there was the implied peril of speaking out loud concerning a certain something on that range?—Something to do with mavericks!—It so happened that an unbranded calf had been one of Jimmy’s weaknesses. Like most open range riders he had been convinced that a maverick was any man’s property. As a matter of fact that was true according to range custom everywhere; but it was a law that only cowmen and cowboys who owned cattle could burn their brand on a maverick. If they did not own any stock the appropriation of mavericks made them cattle thieves. Lincoln had heard that the ranchers of western Wyoming, hoping to induce rustlers to give their ranges a wide berth, had adopted the ruthless practice of hanging a cattle thief without formality.

Bradway concluded that it was possible, though improbable, that Weston might have had something to do with mavericks. In such case, however, it was hardly conceivable that he would have been shot while sitting at a card table. The report had been spread, he surmised, to cover murder. Thatcher’s warning to his companion, Smeade, that he would get what Jimmy Weston got!—There was something ominous about that warning. To the man from Nebraska that warning was the clue to the mystery he had come to South Pass to solve.

After having appeased his hunger and made a fruitless effort to be friendly with the far from loquacious Chinaman, Bradway got up, paid for his meal and went out into the street. It was quite dark and the air was thin and cold, with a tang of mountain snow. Lincoln remembered how Jimmy had raved about the Wind River Mountains, and how he himself had watched from the stage to see them appear as if by magic out of the haze of distance, and grow and grow during two days of travel until the jagged white peaks, magnificent and aloof, pierced the blue sky. Little as he had seen of this western Wyoming country, he could easily have been captivated by it but for the grim mission which had brought him from his home.

He walked up through and beyond the center of the wide-open town. Then, crossing the street, he started back on the other side. This time he heard the babbling of a brook which evidently passed behind and paralleled the row of unpainted houses on that side. Lincoln peered into every open door. He scrutinized every passer-by that he encountered. Miners in red shirts, black-frocked and wide-hatted gamblers, flashily dressed women, cowboys and ranchers, teamsters and sheepmen, well-dressed travelers and ragged tramps, all made up that passing throng. A few Indians lolled in the shadows, smoking the white man’s cigarettes. Stores and hotels appeared busy with customers, and the saloons were thronged with noisy crowds. Once a gunshot penetrated the din, but nobody in that milling crowd seemed to pay any attention to it.

Bradway’s careful observation confirmed his earlier opinion that South Pass was indeed a wide-open mining town at the height of its prosperity and youth, as raw and violent as Hays City, as flush as Benton, the mushroom town that flourished during the building of the Union Pacific. He had seen both of these border towns in all their frontier turbulences and color. He did not need to be told that law and order had not yet come to South Pass, that gold was to be had for the digging, or stealing, or gambling for, that vice was rampant and life held cheap.

After his survey of the town Bradway began methodically to enter each public place, from the canvas dens at the foot of the street, to the stores and saloons and gambling halls that bordered the sidewalk. He spent an hour of most diligent search before he again came upon Mel Thatcher and his two pals. Thatcher was standing beside a table where his two friends were playing cards with two other cowboys. There was more liquor on the table than money. Smeade appeared the worse for drink and his luck clearly was bad.

Thatcher’s lean visage wore a worried look, but it showed none of the heat of dissipation that was reflected in the faces of the others. Lincoln watched them a while. He knew cowboys. He had known a thousand in his time. They were all more or less alike, yet there were exceptions. Thatcher seemed to be one of these. The Nebraskan liked his looks. Thatcher was too young to have had experience that matched his own, but it was evident that he was no novice at anything pertaining to cowboy life. He packed a gun, but did not wear it below his hip, as was the practice of most gun-throwers.

When Lincoln approached this cowboy he was yielding to an instinct, deep and inevitable, for something had told him that here was a hombre who might supply the answers to some of his questions.

“Howdy, Thatcher,” he said, coolly, as the other wheeled at his touch. “I’ve been looking for you particular hard.”

“Hell you say?” returned Thatcher, with angry insolence. “And for why, mister smart-aleck?”

“I reckon you better return the compliment before you go shooting off your chin.”

“Yeah?” The cowboy straightened up, turned squarely to face the stranger beside him. Then he said: “Never saw you in my life. I’d have remembered. So you must be looking up the wrong man.”

“Maybe so. I hope not. Come aside for a minute,” replied Lincoln, and he led the curious cowboy away from the players who did not seem to be aware of the interruption. “No offense, Thatcher,” continued the Nebraskan, in a low and earnest voice. “I’m from over Nebraska way. Name is Linc Bradway. Ever hear it?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“Do you remember coming out of the Chinaman’s restaurant an hour or more ago?”

“Yes,” said Thatcher, with a visible start. “But what the hell business is that of yours?” he wanted to know.

“I was just about to go in the Chink’s when two of your tipsy pals busted out. I stepped back in the shadow.... I heard every word you and Smeade said.”

Thatcher’s red face seemed to pale a bit in the lamplight. “Ahuh ... and what if you did?”

“One crack you made I’m calling on you to explain.”

“Say, I don’t explain nothing to nobody, especially to strangers,” retorted Thatcher.

“I heard you tell your loud-mouthed pard that if he didn’t stop gabbing ... he would get what Jimmy Weston got!”

Thatcher gulped. “Cowboy, I never said no such thing,” he declared, defiantly. But he looked as if he had suddenly been hit in the midriff with the hind foot of a mule.

“Don’t make me call you a liar,” retorted Bradway. “I heard you. I couldn’t be mistaken, because I was Jimmy Weston’s pard for years. We rode trail together and bunked with a dozen outfits. I loved that boy.... He got in trouble back in Nebraska—lit out for Wyoming. He wrote me some queer things about a girl named Lucy, for instance, and another man....”

“Judas!” muttered Thatcher, grabbing Linc Bradway’s arm. “If you know what’s good for you you’ll shut up altogether.”

“Thatcher, I can’t be shut up. Of course, I’ve no way to make you talk, but if you’re honest—if you were no enemy of Jimmy Weston’s ...”

“I swear I wasn’t his enemy,” replied Thatcher, hoarsely, “He was as likable a feller as I ever met. But that’s all I can tell you.”

“Do you believe what they say that my pard was shot in a gambling den for cheating?”

“Man, you can’t hold me responsible for what’s claimed in South Pass,” protested the cowboy. His tenseness, his apparent concern amazed the Nebraskan, and confirmed his growing impression that there was something menacing as well as mysterious in connection with the death of Jimmy Weston.

“I’m not holding you responsible,” argued Bradway. “I can’t shoot a man for believing loose talk. But I’ve a hunch that you know damn well Jimmy wasn’t shot for cheating at cards.”

“A hunch is nothing. Naturally you take your pard’s part. You can’t prove he wasn’t.”

“The hell’s fire I can’t. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Then my hunch to you is, beat it hell for leather off this range while the getting’s good!”

“Thatcher, you’re advising me to do what you wouldn’t do yourself,” asserted Lincoln. “Isn’t that the truth?”

“I’m not saying what I’d do.”

“Well, are you coming clean with what you know—or are you lining up with the dirty coward who shot my pardner?”

“I can’t tell you—I don’t know any more,” returned Thatcher, his eyes on the sawdust on the floor.

“You’re feeling pretty low-down to have to lie like that,” said Bradway. “Thatcher, I’m on the trail of something rotten. Your warning to Smeade proves it. All right. Make a friend or enemy of me, as you choose. But I’m a bad hombre to enemies, as you’re going to damn soon find out.”

Thatcher, apparently torn between a powerful and resistless inhibition, and what might have been an effort to give an honest answer to an appeal to his true self, met Bradway’s level gray eyes for a fleeting instant, then turned back to his gambling comrades. Smeade was glowering at him, and not too drunk not to be suspicious.

Lincoln turned on his heel, burning within, cold without, and stalked from the noisy saloon into the street. The sensible thing to do was to go back to his room and calmly to think through the information he had gathered during the past few hours. But he could not bring himself to do it—not quite yet. He might fall afoul of something more that would dovetail with what he already had learned. He never failed to yield to such an urge as compelled him now. Besides, the driving passion that had brought him to Wyoming, demanded action rather than contemplation.

In a little shop down the street he bought a cigar from a young man who seemed to be of a friendly sort. “Been in this hole long?” asked Lincoln in a conversational tone, as he lighted the cigar.

“Most a year. Too long. South Pass is gettin’ too rough for an honest businessman. I was held up an’ robbed twice in one night not long ago,” replied the young store proprietor.

“Huh. I rolled in only today and gathered that very idea myself. Don’t you keep a gun handy?”

“Shore. But I was lookin’ into one when it happened.”

“I reckon that gunplay here is pretty common.”

“There wasn’t so much when I first came. But lately you’re lucky to dodge bullets.”

“Did you happen to know a cowboy by the name of Jimmy Weston?”

“Shore did. Liked Jimmy a lot. Did you know him?”

“Yes, back Nebraska way. I asked for him here, and heard he’d been shot.”

“Too bad, if you were friends.”

“Where was Jimmy killed?” queried Bradway, from behind a cloud of smoke.

“Emery’s place. Biggest gamblin’ hell in town. Used to be named Take It or Leave It. Mean’ gold, of course. Someone painted out the first three words. Now it’s called the Leave It. Shore’s appropriate. Rumor had it that Jimmy Weston rode his horse under that big sign, stood up on his saddle, an’ climbed up to do that paintin’! Anyway he was shot in a card game, for palmin’ aces in a big jackpot—or so they said. No one except the gamblers saw the fight, or know who shot Jimmy. Sort of a queer deal all around, I thought. But that was the talk.”

“Ahuh. Big poker games at this Emery’s joint, I reckon?”

“You bet. Sky limit. No game for a cowboy, stranger.”

“Thanks for the hunch. All the same before I leave town I’ll take a fly at Emery’s Leave It.”

“That’s just like Jimmy. No two-bit game for him! But if you do, you’re not as smart as you look. Emery is a cardsharp. An’ his right-hand man McKeever is a gambler to steer clear of. He’ll shoot at the drop of a card. Jerks a little gun from inside his vest.”

“Gosh, must be interesting people! Any women hang around Emery’s?”

“There’s one, an’ she shore is plumb interestin’. Kit Bandon, the Maverick Queen, they call her. Handsome as hell, an’ when she cocks her eye at a man he’s a goner. Better not let her see you, stranger, ’cause you’re shore the finest-lookin’ cowboy who ever struck South Pass.”

“You are flattering, my friend. I reckon you filled poor Jimmy with such guff. He was a vain gazabo.... But this Kit Bandon—what is she?”

“Runs a big cattle ranch down on the Sweetwater. Leans to mavericks. Her brand is K I T.”

“Mavericks—well, you don’t say! Reckon she runs a two-bit outfit?”

“You might call it that—comin’ from Nebraska. Kit hires cowboys for short spells, to round up and drive. Last fall she sent a thousand head of two-year olds to Rock Springs.... Excuse me. What’ll you have, gentlemen?”

A couple of new customers diverted the garrulous cigar salesman from Bradway. He yawned and left the store. Once more he mingled with the sidewalk throngs, his mind active, his eyes scanning the lettered signs on the buildings. Presently across the street he espied a white two-story frame structure. It had an ornate balcony along the second story. Over the wide doorway below shone the brightest lights on the street. Above on a high board front stood out garishly a crude splotch of red, where words had been obliterated, and to the right he saw what remained of the name: Leave It in large black letters in relief against the white!

“By thunder!” muttered the Nebraskan. “I bet that clerk was right! That’s the very stunt Jimmy would have pulled when he was feeling sort of reckless—and ornery.”

Lincoln crossed the street and entered, to find himself in the largest hall he had ever seen. The room was deep and wide, with a low ceiling. A bar ran its entire length, and it accommodated two rows of drinkers. Lincoln stepped back to get a better perspective of the crowd.

After all, there seemed little here of raw frontier life that he had not already seen in Benton and the Kansas cattle towns. It might have a newer note. Sweat and smoke and sawdust and rum and leather and sage gave the noisy room an atmosphere characteristic of all boom towns of the West. There were a dozen or more games of chance all crowded with players, among whom he noticed several women. Could one of them possibly be the woman he was so curious to see? He had heard of cattle queens, but had never had the good or bad fortune to meet one of them. He shared the rather general opinion of cattlemen that women should not stick their noses into the cattle business.

Then in an alcove under the stairs he espied a circle of eagerly watching men who were undoubtedly intent upon a big game. Bradway made his way through the arch and gradually, without being obtrusive, he penetrated the circle until he could see over a man’s shoulder to a card table, covered with gold and greenbacks, in front of six gamblers. Instantly he realized that this was the establishment’s big game and that these were the individuals he wanted to watch. One was a handsome, dark young woman of perhaps twenty-five years. She wore a diamond as big as a gooseberry, and she was dressed in some black material becomingly relieved at the yoke and the waist by touches of red. A couple of newcomers probed their way in behind Lincoln. “That’s her,” whispered one of the men excitedly. “Ther’s Kit Bandon, Queen of the Mavericks. She’s ahaid of the game, too, as usual.” The other of the two exclaimed under his breath, “Glory in the mornin’, look at that stack of yellows! An’ ain’t she a pippin for looks?”

The Nebraskan found himself staring at the lovely, reckless, excited face of the Maverick Queen. Even though she did not glance in his direction Lincoln Bradway felt the impelling lure she seemed to exercise over every man in that excited group. Suddenly, one of the players directly in front of him threw down his cards.

“I’m cleaned. You’re all too good for me,” he said, shaking his head dolefully.

“What do you mean by ‘good’?” asked the russet-bearded gamester sitting next to the woman. He had thin blue lips and piercing gray eyes, cold as ice. Lincoln’s critical eye flashed from the gambler’s soft white hands to his open flowered vest. Could the little bulge on the left side possibly represent a gun?

“Sorry, you can take that ‘good’ any way you like,” bitterly replied the loser, getting up from his chair.

The gambler snarled and made a sudden movement, only to be restrained by the strikingly dressed woman beside him. “Emery, let him alone,” she commanded in a voice that was low-pitched but clear as a bell. “He’s got a right to feel sore. He dropped two thousand dollars, didn’t he?”

“No man can hint like that to me—”

“Let’s go on with the game,” interrupted another player, evidently a rancher judging from his garb and deeply bronzed face. He had a direct clear gaze, and a strong chin under his drooping mustache. The remaining two players, one of them obviously another gambler and the last a burly miner, seconded that motion. Then the disgruntled loser pushed by Lincoln and was lost in the crowd. Almost simultaneously the watchers about the table exhaled a breath that expressed their relief.

Without a word the Nebraskan slipped into the vacated seat, and leaning back he put a slow hand inside his coat. His heavy gun sheath had bumped the table, upsetting some of the stacks of yellow coin.

“Folks, I’m setting in,” he announced coolly. His look, his manner, his quick action turned every eye in that group upon him. He was suddenly conscious that the Maverick Queen’s dark, smoldering eyes were fixed upon his face.

“This is no game for two-bit cowboys,” spoke up Emery, sharply. It was plain that he did not care for contact with range riders of Lincoln’s type.

“Money talks, doesn’t it, in this shack, same as in the gambling halls of Dodge and Abiline?” drawled Lincoln, and pulling out a tight roll of bills he dropped it on the table, exposing a one-hundred-dollar bill on the outside.

“Yes, money talks here, but not for everybody,” snapped Emery.

“Is there anything offensive about me, lady?” asked Bradway, courteously, as he turned an intent and smiling gaze upon her.

“There certainly isn’t. You’re welcome to play,” replied the woman, turning her back upon Emery and half nodding and smiling in Lincoln’s direction. With difficulty, the cowboy turned his glance away from the strangely disturbing eyes of the Maverick Queen.

“Thank you.... Mister Emery, I’ll take up your insult later.... Is it a table-stakes or limit game?”

“Five dollar limit,” said the rancher, “except in jackpots. Make your own limit then.... My name’s Lee.”

“Glad to meet you, Colonel. Mine’s Bradway.”

The next man, McKeever, sneered, exposing yellow teeth like those of a wolf, but for a gambler his gaze was furtive. Bradway felt an instinctive distrust of him that was even sharper than his feeling for Emery. The red-shirted miner nodded his approval and the game began.

Bradway was gambling with more than cards, for something even more important than gold. He felt capable of matching these men, unless he had a run of poor cards, for like most cowboys he was keen and shrewd at poker, and when luck was with him he was well-nigh unbeatable. But he had to watch Emery and the wolf-toothed man especially closely. They might be in cahoots. He studied his opponents with unobtrusive scrutiny, well aware of the fact that they were studying him in turn. But the rancher Lee, the miner, and Kit Bandon were not cold or insolent—nor calculating about it. The woman was interested in the newcomer and clearly showed it. Bradway could see right away that her actions were displeasing to Emery.

The first hand of note was a jackpot which the dealer took for fifty dollars. Lincoln’s eyes watched the swift, dexterous hands of the gambler. Everybody present was aware of his scrutiny. He made no effort to disguise his watchfulness. The onlookers wondered if the cowboy would catch the gambler in a crooked deal, and what would happen if he did.

The hands were dealt, and Kit Bandon promptly opened for the size of the ante. Lee stayed, likewise the miner. Lincoln had four hearts, a hand to raise on, but he merely stayed, wanting to see what McKeever and Emery would do. The former raised it to one hundred dollars. Emery studied his hand a while, then stayed, and the Maverick Queen followed suit. Lee dropped out, and the miner put in his hundred dollars. Without hesitation, Bradway doubled that sum in his raise. Gamblers never reveal their feelings, yet Lincoln divined that this raise roused conjecture, to say the least. They all stayed, and cards were drawn. Kit Bandon’s opening bet was a hundred, which the miner saw. The cowboy also called, but both McKeever and Emery raised and she raised them in turn. Lee manifested a curious hard expression in his eyes as he watched the tall stranger. Probably he was thinking what Lincoln was certain of—that Kit Bandon and her gambler friends were tilting the bets with the old purpose of driving an odd player out. But the Nebraskan kept calling until finally he forced them to quit raising. There was over a thousand dollars in the pot.

“Opened on three queens,” said Kit, with a dazzling smile.

“Well, counting you that makes four queens,” replied the cowboy, smiling back at her. “Almost unbeatable, but the hand is no good.”

McKeever dropped his cards upon the deck.

“I called you. Show your cards,” demanded Lincoln, curtly. Then as the gambler made no move Lincoln overturned the hand to expose a pair of tens.

“More than I figured you for,” said Lincoln, sarcastically. “Emery, what you got?”

The chief of the Leave It laid down a pair of aces, and Lincoln showed them a flush. As he raked in the gold and bills he drawled: “This isn’t bad for a small-town gambling joint!”

Emery rasped. “Feller, I don’t like your talk.”

“Gambler, I don’t like your tone either. If you address me again try to be civil.”

It was evident then to the gamblers of the Leave It that they had caught a tartar. Kit Bandon seemed amused and intrigued by this steel-nerved stranger. Lee did not hide his admiration, and even the miner’s bleak visage expanded in a broad smile. McKeever’s face was sullen and dark; his smoldering gaze was downcast. Emery’s cold gray eyes rested without expression upon the fingernails of his left hand.

“My deal,” announced Kit, cheerfully. “Your ante, Lee.... Cowboy, thanks for showing us some real poker.”

And real poker it turned out to be, for Bradway. The cards ran in his direction with phenomenal good luck. He drew in nearly every hand, and almost always filled when he raised before the draw. Kit Bandon and the two gamblers pitted their united skill, and as much trickery as they could get away with against Bradway, only to be beaten at every turn. The miner went broke, and declined the money Lincoln offered him as a stake. Lee seesawed between breaking even and a little money ahead. He was enjoying this game. The crowd that had been augmented to twice its original size watched with bated breath. There was a charged atmosphere around that table. Everyone of the watchers could see it in the woman player. Kit Bandon was a sport, a good loser, a fascinating creature who thrived on excitement and danger. Her color was high, her eyes sparkled, under her breath she hummed a little tune. And the glances she shot in the direction of the stranger conveyed more and more interest in his person than in his poker game.

Linc had met and played against greater gamblers than Emery and McKeever in his time, but none in whom he had encountered as much open hostility. Evidently they were determined to break the newcomer’s luck who so blandly and coolly matched every bet and won nearly every pot. When their stake was gone they borrowed from Kit, who kept a goodly sum in front of her. Finally Emery lost all his money, including what he had borrowed from his woman companion.

“Lady, you sure are a banker,” drawled Bradway. “I hope when I get broke here in South Pass that you’ll stake me to a few bits the way you have these local gents.”

“You can bet on that,” she countered sweetly.

“With your luck—and peculiar style of play you can’t ever go broke,” snarled Emery, with emphasis on the “peculiar.”

“Sure, I’m lucky at cards,” drawled the stranger, “but all-fired unlucky at love,” and he smiled at Kit as he spoke.

“Cowboy, I just can’t believe that last,” she returned. Perhaps her arch look and warm tone accounted for the ill-concealed glint of hatred in Emery’s gaze.

“Gentlemen, and Miss Bandon, the game has slowed up,” continued Bradway, exasperatingly. “Too much talk. And talk appears cheap in this town—I reckon almost as cheap as life.”

“If that’s one of your smart cracks, it just happens to be true,” snapped Emery.

“In case there’s anything personal in that remark, Mister Gambler, I reckon you-all haven’t figured that the outfit who makes mine cheap will be biting sawdust ahead of me,” drawled Linc.

“Who in hell are you?” demanded Emery, in an effort to be sarcastic. But there was curiosity in his voice.

“Linc Bradway. Hail from Missouri, more recently from Nebraska—nephew of Cole Younger, if that means anything to you.”

“Suppose we play one more jack,” suggested Lee, manifestly nervous over the turn the conversation had taken. He sensed the direction events were taking and wanted to get out of the game before things got too tense.

“What a lot of cheap fourflushers!” exclaimed Kit. “But all right, one more jack. Only Mr. Cole Younger’s nephew, I’ll want satisfaction.”

“That’ll be a pleasure, ma’am. I’m sorry, but this will have to be the last game I’ll sit in with your gambler partners,” drawled Linc, deliberately. Apparently these worthies wanted a peg to hang suspicion or accusation upon, and Lincoln was willing to let them have it. It was plain to see that Emery was a snake in the grass. The silent McKeever might be the more dangerous one of the two, after all. Neither, however, made any reply to Linc Bradway’s deliberate insult. The hands were dealt, the pot opened, raised, and cards called for. Linc stayed on a pair of deuces and for once failed to add to the strength of his hand. Betting was light. They were afraid of the stranger’s luck. When he raised the limit of the money in front of Emery that individual followed the lead of the others and threw his cards down in disgust. Then Lincoln, with a queer little smile, laid down his pair of deuces.

“Jess, he stole it!” Kit cried, and it almost appeared as if she were pleased with the gamblers’ discomfiture. “You and Mac took this cowboy for a tenderfoot, and he has cleaned you.”

Lee laughed. “He cleaned us all, and if I know poker he pulled as straight a game as I’ll gamble he can shoot.”

“Thanks, Colonel, that’s Texas talk if I know folks from the South,” returned Linc. “And now, Mister Emery, you can eat that hint about my peculiar play.”

The circle of spectators shifted uneasily and there was a perceptible sway toward the alcove portal. But there was too much uncertainty, too great an undercurrent of excitement for the crowd to bolt yet. Emery, however, no longer labored under his misapprehension.

“Bradway, no insult intended,” he said.

“So you are willing to crawl? ... Emery, every look and word of yours to me has been insulting.... I’m calling you.”

“Cowboy, you must be looking for trouble.”

“Yes, and I’ve found it. But not much trouble for a hombre like me. Come on!”

Kit Bandon suddenly interposed in the tense situation. “Bradway, these friends of mine often forget there’s a lady present. But you’re a gentleman.”

“Thanks, I haven’t overlooked the fact that you’re a thoroughbred in bad company.”

“I reckon I can stick it out,” she returned flatly. She did not show the least fear of Bradway or concern for her friends. “Jess, it looks as though you and Mac have riled the wrong cowboy.”

“Kit, you forget what happened to the last cowboy you took a shine to,” flashed the gambler, angrily. If these two, the gambler and the girl, despite the obvious close relationship between them, did not hate each other, then Bradway was a poor judge of character.

“Hell no, I haven’t,” she returned, just as angrily.

Linc, after pocketing his winnings, pounded the table with his left hand. His right was significantly not in sight. “Cut it, Miss Bandon, begging your pardon. Let Emery talk to me.”

At this juncture Lee and the miner quietly vacated their chairs. “Lemme out,” demanded the red-shirted giant. “If I know this stripe of feller there’ll be hell poppin’ here pronto.” His remark started an exodus. Still the morbid remained.

“Bradway, you’re unreasonable,” shouted Emery, shrilly. “I can’t crawfish for something I may have said unintentionally.”

“Crawfish—hell! Your liver is as white as your face.... Lady, kindly get up and out of this.”

Kit Bandon neither flinched nor moved. She appeared fascinated by this drama in which a young and personable stranger was forcing the issue against her friends.

“Emery, you’re a cheap gambler—a poor loser—a damned liar. ... Stop! Keep your hand out of that vest!”

The remaining watchers broke pell-mell to get out and for a moment there was a mingling of whistling breaths, and the trampling scuffles of hurried feet.

Emery’s white hand sank twitching back to the table. Out of the corner of one eye Bradway caught McKeever’s hand slipping inside his vest. Then the cowboy gave the table a tremendous shove and sprang erect, his gun leaping out.