Claim Number One Part 6

At that moment Dr. Slavens, lurching as if shoved violently from behind, set his shoulder against the table and pushed it, hard and suddenly, against the one-eyed man's chest, all but throwing him backward against the wall of the tent. The gambler's elbows flew up in his struggle to keep to his feet, and the hand that hovered over the dicebox dropped the dice upon the board.

Instantly a shout went up; instantly half a hundred hands clawed at the table to retrieve their stakes. For the one-eyed man had dropped not five dice, but ten.

He waited for no further developments. The tent-wall parted behind him as he dived through into the outer darkness, taking with him his former winnings and his "bank," which had been cunningly arranged on the green cloth for no other purpose; his revolver and his dice, leaving nothing but the box behind.

The young man gathered up his stake with nervous hands and turned his flushed face to the doctor, smiling foolishly.

"Thank you, old man," he said. "Oh, yes! I know you now," he added, offering his hand with great warmth. "You were with her people at the dance."

"Of course," smiled the doctor. "How much did you lose?"

"Say, I ought to have a nurse!" said the young man abjectly. "If you hadn't heaved that table into the old devil's ribs just then he'd 'a'

skinned me right! Oh, about six hundred, I guess; but in ten minutes more he'd 'a' cleaned me out. Walker's my name," he confided; "Joe Walker. I'm from Cheyenne."

Dr. Slavens introduced himself.

"And I'm from Missouri," said he.

Joe Walker chuckled a little.

"Yes; the old man's from there, too," said he, with the warmth of one relative claiming kinship with another from far-away parts; "from a place called Saint Joe. Did you ever hear of it?"

"I've heard of it," the doctor admitted, smiling to himself over the ingenuous unfolding of the victim whom he had s.n.a.t.c.hed from the sacrifice.

"They don't only have to show you fellers from Missouri," pursued Walker; "but you show _them_! That's the old man's way, from the boot-heels up."

They were walking away from the gambling-tent, taking the middle of the road, as was the custom in Comanche after dark, sinking instep deep in dust at every step.

"What are you doing with all that money in a place like this?" the doctor questioned.

"Well, it's this way," explained Walker with boyish confidence. "The old man's going to set me up in a sheep-ranch between here and Casper. We've got a ranch bargained for with six miles of river-front, he sent me over here with five thousand dollars to cinch the business before the feller changed his mind."

"Why didn't you bring a draft?" the doctor wondered.

"Some of these sheepmen wouldn't take government bonds. Nothing but plain cash goes with them."

"Oh, I didn't think you had any particular use for even that, the way you're slinging it around!" said the doctor, with no attempt to hide the feeling he held for any such recklessness.

"Looked that way," admitted Walker thoughtfully. "But I've got to meet that sheepman here at the bank in the morning, where he can have somebody that he's got confidence in feel of the money and tell him it's genuine, and I'll have to put up some kind of a stall to cover the money I lost. Guess I can get away with it, somehow. Cripes! I sweat needles every time I think of what'd 'a' happened to me if you hadn't showed us suckers that one-eyed feller's hand!"

"Well, the important thing now, it seems to me, is to hang on to what's left till you meet that rancher."

"Don't you worry!" rejoined Walker warmly. "I'm going to sit on the edge of that little old bunk all night with my six-shooter in one hand and that money in the other! And any time in future that you see me bettin'

on any man's game, you send for the fool-killer, will you?"

"Yes, if I happen to be around," promised the doctor.

"I ought to know 'em; I was raised right here in Wyoming among 'em,"

said Walker. "I thought that feller was square, or maybe off a little, because he talked so much. He was the first talkin' gambler I ever met."

"Talk is his trick," Slavens enlightened him. "That was old Hun Shanklin, the flat-game man. I've looked him up since I got here. He plays suckers, and nothing _but_ suckers. No gambler ever bets on Hun Shanklin's game. He talks to keep their eyes on his face while he switches the dice."

Walker was gravely silent a little while, like a man who has just arrived at the proper appreciation of some grave danger which he has escaped.

"I've heard of Hun Shanklin a long time, but I never saw him before," he said. "He's killed several men in his time. Do you suppose he knows you shoved his table, or does he think somebody back of you pushed you against it?"

"I don't suppose he needs anybody to tell him how it happened," replied the doctor a little crabbedly.

"Of course I've got my own notion of it, old feller," prattled Walker; "but they were purty thick around there just then, and shovin' a good deal. I hope he thinks it happened that way. But I know n.o.body shoved you, and I'm much obliged."

"Oh, forget it!" snapped Slavens, thinking of the six hundred dollars which had flown out of the young fellow's hand so lightly. Once he could have bought a very good used automobile for four hundred.

"But don't you suppose--" Walker lowered his voice to a whisper, looking cautiously around in the dark as he spoke--"that you stand a chance to hear from Hun Shanklin again?"

"Maybe," answered Slavens shortly. "Well, here's where I turn off. I'm stopping at the Metropole down here."

"Say!"

Walker caught his arm appealingly.

"Between you and me I don't like the looks of that dump where I've got a bed. You've been here longer than I have; do you know of any place where a man with all this blamed money burnin' his hide might pull through till morning with it if he happened to slip a cog and go to sleep?"

"There's a spare cot in our tent," said the doctor, "and you're welcome to it if you feel that you can trust yourself in our company. We mess together in a sort of communistic fashion."

Walker was profuse in his grat.i.tude.

"I'll feel easy among decent people!" he declared. "I'm mostly decent myself, and my family's one of the best in this state. Don't you size me up by what you saw me do tonight, will you?"

"The best of us slip up once in a while," Slavens said.

Walker had some business of clearing his throat. And then:

"Are you--that is--is _she_, related to you?"

"Oh, no," laughed the doctor. "I'm sorry she isn't."

"She's a peach; don't you think so?"

"Undoubtedly," admitted the doctor. "Well, here we are--at home."

They stood outside a little while, their faces turned toward the town.

It was quieting down now. Here and there a voice was raised in drunken song or drunken yelp; here and there a pistol-shot marked the location of some silly fellow who believed that he was living and experiencing all the recklessness of the untamed West. Now and then the dry, shrill laughter of a woman sounded, without lightness, without mirth, as if it came from the lips of one who long, long ago, in the fever of pain and despair, had wept her heart empty of its tears. Now and again, also, a wailing cornet lifted its lone voice, dying away dimly like a disappearing light.

"The wolves are satisfied for one night; they've stopped howling," the doctor said.

CHAPTER V