The other waved away the idea.
“Break up a fine game like this because you’re
broke?” The cloudy agate eyes dwelt kindly on
the face of Terry, and mysteriously as well. “That
ain’t nothing. Nothing between friends.
You don’t know the style of a man I am, Terry.
Your word is as good as your money with me!”
“I’ve no security—”
“Don’t talk security. Think I’m
a moneylender? This is a game. Come on!”
Five minutes later Terry was three hundred behind.
A mysterious providence seemed to send all the luck
the way of the heavy, tanned thumb of Pollard.
“That’s my limit,” he announced
abruptly, rising.
“No, no!” Pollard spread out his big hand
on the table. “You got the red hoss, son.
You can bet to a thousand. He’s worth that—to
me!”
“I won’t bet a cent on him,” said
Terry firmly.
“Every damn cent I’ve won from you ag’in’
the hoss, son. That’s a lot of cash if
you win. If you lose, you’re just out that
much hossflesh, and I’ll give you a good enough
cayuse to take El Sangre’s place.”
“A dozen wouldn’t take his place,”
insisted Terry.
“That so?”
Pollard leaned back in his chair and put a hand behind
his neck to support his head. It seemed to Terry
that the big man made some odd motion with his hidden
fingers. At any rate, the four men who lounged
on the farther side of the room now rose and slowly
drifted in different directions. Oregon Charlie
wandered toward the door. Slim sauntered to the
window behind the piano and stood idly looking out
into the night. Phil Marvin began to examine
a saddle hanging from a peg on one of the posts, and
finally, chunky Marty Cardiff strolled to the kitchen
door and appeared to study the hinges.
All these things were done casually, but Terry, his
attention finally off the game, caught a meaning in
them. Every exit was blocked for him. He
was trapped at the will of Joe Pollard!
Looking back, he could understand everything easily.
The horse was the main objective of Pollard.
He had won the money so as to tempt Terry to gamble
with the value of the blood-bay. But by fair means
or foul he intended to have El Sangre. And now,
the moment his men were in place, a change came over
Pollard. He straightened in the chair. A
slight outthrust of his lower jaw made his face strangely
brutal, conscienceless. And his cloudy agate
eyes were unreadable.
“Look here, Terry,” he argued calmly,
but Terry could see that the voice was raised so that
it would undubitably reach the ears of the farthest
of the four men. “I don’t mind letting
a gambling debt ride when a gent ain’t got anything
more to put up for covering his money. But when
a gent has got more, I figure he’d ought to
cover with it.”
Unreasoning anger swelled in the throat of Terry Hollis;
the same blind passion which had surged in him before
he started up at the Cornish table and revealed himself
to the sheriff. And the similarity was what sobered
him. It was the hunger to battle, to kill.
And it seemed to him that Black Jack had stepped out
of the old picture and now stood behind him, tempting
him to strike.
