Journeyman by Erskine Caldwell

Author:Erskine Caldwell [Caldwell, Erskine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1701-6
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2011-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter XII

CLAY’S SHIRT AND HAIR were wet with perspiration. The sun was sinking behind the barn, and the shadows were long; but Clay could not keep from sweating. Across from him, only three feet away, Semon Dye looked as cool as the early morning dew.

Semon had said nothing for a long time. He sat lower on his heels, and the seat of his pants scraped the ground each time he moved. He had become accustomed to his position.

Against the brick chimney Tom sat watching them with not a word to say. He had long before lost everything he had with him, and his pockets were empty.

“Looks like something’s wrong,” Clay said desperately. “It don’t look like I ought to lose right straight along as fast as the dice drop.”

Semon clicked the dice, shaking them in the cupped palm of his hand, and paid no attention to Clay. He had not even heard what Clay had been saying for the past hour.

Clay was down to his last lone dollar. Semon had been doubling and redoubling. Clay could not understand how a whole hundred dollars could pass out of his hands that fast, and leave nothing behind to show for it. It was more money than he usually cleared on a year’s farming.

Semon won the next pot, as usual. There was nothing Clay could do to stop his winning.

“I’m going to give you a chance to win your car back, Horey,” Semon told him coldly. “I don’t like for any son of a bitch to say that I walked out of the game the winner, and wouldn’t give the loser a chance to get even. I’m not that kind of a crap shooter.”

“Maybe I’d just better quit,” Clay said. “Luck looks like it’s against me all around today. I ain’t never lost like this before in all my life. I’ve won a little, three or four dollars, and I’ve lost a little, maybe four or five; but I ain’t never gone through all I owned before like this.”

“It’s tough on you, Horey; but you can’t argue with the dice. What they say is the way it’s meant to be. Ain’t no use swearing at the dice, either. If you put up a stake, you have got to take your chances of losing as well as winning.”

“Maybe I’d do better next time. Looks like it ain’t no use to keep it up now. I’d only be losing everything in the world.”

Semon picked up the dice.

“I want you to have a chance to get even,” he insisted, “I can’t walk out of a game without giving the loser that last chance at luck.”

“I don’t want it, though. I ain’t got a thing left to put up, for one thing. And if I had it, it wouldn’t be no use today, because I haven’t done a doggone thing but lose all the way through.”

“You’re going to take it, anyhow,” Semon stated, looking at him through the slits of his leather-tight face. “You’re going to take that last chance to get even, Horey.

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