Clung by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2017-11-17T23:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER 25

When Kirk left their shanty, a little distance from the outskirts of Kirby Creek, he had ridden fiercely down the ravine towards the heart of the town. He had little hope of gaining upon Winifred; he was not even sure of her destination, but he felt reasonably certain that the same impulse which had taken him out of his bed was that which sent the girl on ahead of him. So he headed at a racing pace straight for Yo Chai’s gambling house and pulled up before it with clattering hoofs.

From the door he scanned the house swiftly but could not catch a glimpse of Winifred.

It seemed impossible that the girl could have gone to any other place, but nevertheless she was not in view. Wherever she had gone he had wasted too much time in the gaming house of Yo Chai to be able to trail her in a night such as this. He decided, finally, that she had followed some nervous womanly impulse and ridden out into the night to find quiet. He did not understand her—he understood no woman, for that matter—and he readily dismissed the matter from his mind. There was little danger that she could come to any positive harm at the hands of these chivalrous Southwesterners.

Perhaps Kirk would have made a more extensive search, but it happened that as he completed his first round of the gaming house his eye caught on the whirling glitter of the roulette wheel and he stopped, fascinated. No one won; the man behind the wheel raked in several piles of money which lay stacked on the board before the wheel. Between the vast sombrero of a Mexican and the cap of a Portuguese laborer, he pushed his way to the roulette wheel and watched the next chance. The wheel stopped, and as if it were a plea for him to remain, the number was the red eleven. This time at least half the gamblers were playing the colors and a number of them cashed in on the red. Kirk watched them with keen interest.

The eyes of the little Portuguese bulged with a permanent excitement and he was continually moistening the palest lips Kirk had ever seen. As for the Mexican, he, also, kept an unchanging gaze fixed on the bright wheel, and his eyes glittered like a snake’s. Yet he played with a sneer, as if he scorned to either win or lose. He was staking everything on one number, the black five, and his stake was invariably a five-dollar gold piece. He never won. That accounted for the steady sneer with which he played; it accounted also for the terrible glitter of his eyes. His money was nearly gone, yet he had carried to the gaming house that night all his own little fortune and the plunder of a robber and murdered comrade. Here the price of the murder was slipping from him. Even as Kirk stood there the Mexican fumbled in vain through

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