Bad Man's Gulch (23 page)

“It's the professor's daughter,” said one, resting upon the handle of his pick, and panting and smiling as he glanced up to her. “What you want, honey?”

“You . . . ,” said the girl. Then her rage choked her, and she could only point.

“It's you, Bill,” said one of the others.

He who wore the stolen hat raised his head. “Me?” he asked in much apparent surprise.

He was one of the two middle-aged men who she had noted before. At close range, she could read every sign of viciousness in his face—cunning in the eyes, cruelty in the straight-set mouth, and something ominous, too, in the unnatural pallor of his face.

“Me?” he repeated. “Have you come to see me, young lady?”

“I have come to tell you,” she said, “that I know you are wearing a stolen hat.”

He took it off and looked quietly down at it. “Stolen?” he said. “Who claims it, if you please?”

“It's my father's hat,” she said, trembling with anger.

“Your pa's hat, eh? What's his name?”

“William Berenger.”

“I don't see any William Berenger written on this hat,” he said, smiling down at it.

“And our timber, that you tore from its place, and used to build your own shack,” she went on.

“No names wrote upon any of the stuff that we've used,” put in one of the others. “As for what you think, honey, thinking ain't much important in Slosson's
Gulch. Not without guns to back it up. If your pa claims that stuff is stole from him, why don't he come and talk for himself? Eh?”

She looked from face to face hopelessly, seeing their spreading grins.

“Besides,” put in one of them, “if your pa has made such a rich strike as they say, he ain't the man to worry about a little thing like a hat, is he?”

They knew of the find that her father had made the day before, then she wondered how much more they knew. Words broke from her lips savagely. “I promise you this,” she cried. “The things that you've taken will be torn away from you, and I'll find friends to do it for me!”

“Friends?” said he who wore the stolen hat. “My dear girl, you must remember that no man has more than one friend in Slosson's Gulch, and the name of that friend is gold. Now, don't forget that!” And he heaved up his pick with a laugh to make another stroke.

“Ask Pedro Melendez if that is true!” she cried in answer. She regretted the words as soon as she had spoken them. But what other friend had she in camp, if her father was gone? Yet she had no right to name Melendez.

Bill's pick was frozen in place, poised above his shoulder. “Melendez is his name, then?” he asked. “A greaser, I suppose. Why, then, I'll have to look up this Melendez that's to do all the tearing away and restoring.” And he fixed his steady, piercing eyes on her.

She was aware, then, suddenly, that he wore a revolver at each hip, even as he stood there in the hole, working. All the rest were armed, also. Suppose, indeed, that they were to start to find Melendez and take him to task?

She turned away toward her shack, knowing that she must find Melendez, if she could, and warn him of the danger in which he stood because of her foolishness. But how could she find him in Slosson's Gulch? How could she go alone into the gambling halls where the men were crowded? There, alone, she could hope to locate him. To go to find one man in that town was like trying to locate one bee in a buzzing hive.

However, she was comforted by the knowledge that, even if she had brought Melendez into some danger, it could hardly be called an imminent one. If it would be hard for her to find him, it would be almost equally impossible for the others. So thought Louise Berenger, sitting moodily in front of her shack.

But all thought of Melendez passed suddenly from her mind. For she saw the sun flashing on the white Panama in the diggings across the way, and the shadow of her father crossed darkly across her mind and remained there.

For twenty-four hours he had been gone from her. Certainly nothing but death could have kept him away so long.

Of those gambling places in the town of Slosson's Gulch, there was one that justly held preëminence. That was the institution of Hans Grimm. There is something about gaming that proprietors usually wish to keep secret, not only because it is illegal, but chiefly because they know in their consciences that they are taking an unfair advantage of their business patrons, so that the other gaming halls in Slos-son's Gulch were maintained with a usual air of forbidding privacy, so far as that could be supported. No matter how dense or how eager a crowd frequented the gaming tables, there was sure to be half a dozen forbidding figures scattered here and there—the official bouncers who guarded the place against riots. And besides, a little air of darkness and of mystery surrounded each of the halls—but not in Grimm's place.

Hans Grimm had risen to his present eminence from the gutters of Milwaukee. Starting life as a homeless street urchin, Hans had wandered far and wide, and gradually he had come to know human nature. He had been a trick bicycle rider in a circus
for a time, and, when he came to Slosson's Gulch, it seemed as though he was opening a little circus of his own, instead of a gambling house.

First he put up a seven-foot wooden fence in a circle around an ample piece of land. It was a good, stout fence, and it was secured still more by having a ditch run around it and dirt heaped up almost to the top of the boards, all around. This made a wall that shut out every breath of wind, defying the heat of the torrid western sun almost as thoroughly as a massive adobe wall.

Inside of this circular enclosure, Hans Grimm sank lordly pine trees, with their branches lopped off close to the trunk. And over the tops of these huge posts, he stretched a great quantity of canvas that had once been, it was said, actually a part of a circus tent. At any rate, in this fashion he established for himself a great theater for operations.

He kept it all open and free. Around the outer edges of the circle, there were seats and benches and little tables where anyone was free to sit and cool himself from the hot sun of Slosson's Gulch. There would be no questions asked, and no one would ask them either to play at the tables or else to move on. Those little tables could be used, also, for little games of poker that had nothing to do with the profits of the house. Hans Grimm permitted this and never raised a hand to prevent it, although thousands of dollars were frittered away in this fashion, money that might legitimately have passed through his hands. He was contented to let smaller fish swim here and there as they pleased. But all was done so cheerfully, gaily, normally, and happily in the place of Hans Grimm that no man could sit long at the sides and look on.

This was like a circus, to be sure, but it was also a circus in which one need not remain in one's seat. When one saw some lucky fellow standing at dice, taking in chips by the handful, one could go stand by his side, try to fathom his system, and do a little betting one's self—nothing much—only a dollar or two, perhaps. But if one won, it was foolish to stop, and if one lost, it was ridiculous to stop before the tide of fortune changed. Bad luck cannot keep on
forever!
There was no fear of crooked devices in the gambling house of Hans Grimm; there was a sunny surety of honesty in his establishment.

So men found it easier to bet with Hans Grimm. They found it easier to bet high, also, which is the main point. So that, after all, Hans began to draw two-thirds of all the gaming business in Slosson's Gulch into his place. Yet there never seemed to be a tumult in Grimm's house. There was never a jam, a hustling of shoulders against shoulders, except when some exciting piece of play took place at one of the tables, and a throng of spectators gathered. There was never a dense cloud of tobacco smoke, never an annoying sense of guards and bouncers, here and there, to make one feel that one had entered either a prison or a den of thieves.

Now and again a man could be seen carrying a heavy satchel to one of the tables or taking it away again. A continual current of coin was flowing in at Grimm's in order that the winnings of the gamblers might be paid. When such a river of fortune was running away, who would be so foolish as to miss a chance to dip his hand into the golden stream? So thought the people of Slosson's Gulch, and so thought the six men who had commenced their digging so close to the lean-to of Berenger.

They had done enough work for one day. Now they drew straws to see who should seek relaxation in the gulch, and what two must remain to guard the claim. The Negro and the Dane were the unlucky ones who had to remain behind. The other four strode off down the valley, tired, but very happy, with the Panama on the head of Bill Legrain showing them the way like a beacon light. Although the others went eagerly, he went with the swiftness of a hawk to a familiar hunting field. The talents of Bill Legrain were many, but in no sphere was he so much at home as at the gaming table.

Ordinarily he did not waste his time in Hans Grimm's house. He had not much use for Grimm and for the methods that were in vogue there. There was no opening for the talents of an outsider. No matter what skill might be in the dexterous fingers of Bill, Mr. Grimm could not find a place for him in his scheme of things.

But Grimm was apt to say: “There ain't any real use in faking the machines. When a man wants to throw his money away in gambling, he's gonna do it, and he don't have to have any brakes working on the roulette wheel to help in the robbing of him.”

This was the opinion of Hans Grimm, and, since he had made a tidy fortune in gambling houses, he was entitled to a viewpoint of his own. But Mr. Legrain leaned more to the old usages. He patronized the other places in Slosson's Gulch, where the proprietors were not averse to keeping a few “outside men” working from time to time and, like lions, allowing jackals to feast on the kills. However, on this day of days, there was too much happiness in the heart of Mr. Legrain. His pals and he had made a strike that might lead on to fortune for them all. When one is digging gold out of the bowels of the
earth, one is also willing to risk one's affairs in new fields.

So Legrain led his fellows to the home of Hans Grimm. “We'll take a few thousand out of the pockets of the Dutchman tonight,” said Legrain.

Stepping up to the table where poker dice were being rolled, he lost $500 in five bitter minutes. Then he came back and, with his eye, he challenged his friends to try their fortune at this table, also. They lost—with a ridiculous speed and surety.

“The dice ain't rolling for us tonight,” said the Yankee as he came from the crowd and rejoined his companions.

“The dice ain't rolling? The dice is crooked!” said another.

“You're right,” declared Legrain, white with passion. “It's a crooked game. Too good to use me, the Dutchman is. He keeps his hands clean, he tells me. And here he is running the dirtiest game in the town. I hate a hypocrite. And I'll get Hans Grimm for this. Because, by heaven, I
hate
a hypocrite!” His upper lip furled like the lip of a snarling wolf, and his eyes flashed to this side and to that, as though in search of a victim to be sacrificed to his bitter humor. Just at that moment, there was a little outbreak of applause from the cluster around a table at the upper end of the room.

“Somebody's winning there,” said the Yankee. “Somebody's winning big, too, by the sound of things.”

“Bah,” said Legrain, “do you fall for that stuff, Jerry? They're just playing with some sucker, and they'll trim him, pretty soon, of everything that he ever could call his own. I know this kind of a dive. Crooked and got no heart in 'em. Clean you out in this kind of place, where they're always talking up
how white they are, and how straight they keep their games. But it's a dirty dive, boys, and I'm going to let the town know the truth about it.”

So said Legrain, with spite swelling poisonously in him, and, just as he finished his little speech, to which his friends listened with gravely nodding heads, there was a fresh clamor from the farther end of the room.

They could not resist the temptation. They crowded together with the other watchers around the roulette wheel. At the roulette table, usually so packed with players, there was now only a single man playing, smoking a cigarette, and placing his bets in heaps here and there about the board.

“A system, and a knock-out of a system, at that,” murmured the crowd.

But this player of the “system” consulted no paper covered with figures, before he laid his bets. He staked and staked again with the utmost rapidity, and the intervals between the spinnings of the wheel were short, indeed.

He was a young fellow, very sun-browned, with pale blue eyes, and a scar across one cheek, like a thin, white line. And he took his gambling very lightly. Neither winning nor losing could change his smile. Even as Legrain and his companions looked on, they saw him stake $100 on the number nine, and they saw the croupier push out $3,500 to pay the winner!

$3,500 at a single stroke!

“Who is he?” asked Legrain enviously, as the noisy cheering died down.

“His name is Melendez . . . that's all I know,” was the answer.

An elbow sank in the ribs of Legrain. He turned and saw the lean face of the Yankee beside him.

“It's the girl's man,” said the Yankee.

“I'm not deaf,” said Legrain. “What if it
is
her man?”

“The one that's going to do the tearing to pieces,” said the Yankee insistently. “You know what I mean!”

Legrain scowled. He knew well enough what the Yankee meant, and the same meaning was in the eagerly anticipatory faces of the rest of his friends. They expected action from their leader, and Legrain knew it.