“I’ll win your nugget,” he shouted.  “I’ll beat you at any game. ...  I call your hand. ...  Now if you’ve got any nerve!”

“Come on!” boomed the giant, and he threw his gold down upon the table with a crash.

The bandits closed in around the table with sudden, hard violence, all crowding for seats.

“I’m a-goin’ to set in the game!” yelled Blicky.

“We’ll all set in,” declared Jesse Smith.

“Come on!” was Gulden’s acquiescence.

“But we all can’t play at once,” protested Kells.  “Let’s make up two games.”

“Naw!”

“Some of you eat, then, while the others get cleaned out.”

“Thet’s it—­cleaned out!” ejaculated Budd, meanly.  “You seem to be sure, Kells.  An’ I guess I’ll keep shady of thet game.”

“That’s twice for you, Budd,” flashed the bandit leader.  “Beware of the third time!”

“Hyar, fellers, cut the cards fer who sets in an’ who sets out,” called Blicky, and he slapped a deck of cards upon the table.

With grim eagerness, as if drawing lots against fate, the bandits bent over and drew cards.  Budd, Braverman, and Beady Jones were the ones excluded from the game.

“Beady, you fellows unpack those horses and turn them loose.  And bring the stuff inside,” said Kells.

Budd showed a surly disregard, but the other two bandits got up willingly and went out.

Then the game began, with only Cleve standing, looking on.  The bandits were mostly silent; they moved their hands, and occasionally bent forward.  It was every man against his neighbor.  Gulden seemed implacably indifferent and played like a machine.  Blicky sat eager and excited, under a spell.  Jesse Smith was a slow, cool, shrewed gambler.  Bossert and Pike, two ruffians almost unknown to Joan, appeared carried away by their opportunity.  And Kells began to wear that strange, rapt, weak expression that gambling gave him.

Presently Beady Jones and Braverman bustled in, carrying the packs.  Then Budd jumped up and ran to them.  He returned to the table, carrying a demijohn, which he banged upon the table.

“Whisky!” exclaimed Kells.  “Take that away.  We can’t drink and gamble.”

“Watch me!” replied Blicky.

“Let them drink, Kells,” declared Gulden.  “We’ll get their dust quicker.  Then we can have our game.”

Kells made no more comment.  The game went on and the aspect of it changed.  When Kells himself began to drink, seemingly unconscious of the fact, Joan’s dread increased greatly, and, leaving the peep-hole, she lay back upon the bed.  Always a sword had hung over her head.  Time after time by some fortunate circumstance or by courage or wit or by an act of Providence she had escaped what strangely menaced.  Would she escape it again?  For she felt the catastrophe coming.  Did Jim recognize that fact?  Remembering the look on his face, she was assured that he did.  Then he would be