b9bd780c9c95 Administrator (the red fox clan .txt) 📖

at Rios's hand; he had the suspicion that in her cleverness she discerned looming trouble as a result of encouraging the infatuations of two men like Bruce and Barlow, and that before she would let herself be destroyed by an inevitable jealous rage she meant to set them at each other's throats. Such an act he deemed entirely germane to Zoraida's dark methods.

"Señor Jim does not care to play?" she asked quietly.

Had not Betty chosen to look at him then Kendric's answer would have been a blunt, "No." But Betty did look, and the glance was as eloquent as a gush of stinging words. Without a clue to the girl's thoughts, he merely set her down as the most illogical, impertinent and irritating creature it had ever been his bad lot to encounter. For her eyes told him that he was an animal of some sort of a crawling species which she abhorred. This after he had put in long troubled hours seeking the way to be of service to her!

"Bah," he said in his heart, staring coldly at her until she averted her eyes, "they're all the same." And to Zoraida, "I'll play but I play with my own money."

Zoraida only laughed. His open rudeness seemed unmarked.

"Barlow," said Kendric, "I want a word with you first."

Barlow did not turn or lift his eyes.

"Talk fast then," he retorted. "The game's waiting."

"In private, if you don't mind," urged Kendric.

Now Barlow looked at him sullenly.

"After what happened last night, Kendric," he said heavily, "you and me have got no private business together. Am I the man to take a bullet from another and then go chin with him?"

"You blame me for that?" Kendric was incredulous. Barlow snorted.

"Well," continued Kendric stiffly, "at least we've unfinished business between us. You haven't forgotten what brought us down here, have you?"

"Treasure, you mean?" Barlow spat out the words defiantly. "Put the name to it, man! Well, what of it?"

"The understanding was that we stand together. That we split what we find fifty-fifty. Does that still go?"

Barlow pulled nervously at his forelock, his eyes wandering. For an instant they were fixed on the smiling face of Zoraida. Then grown dogged they came back to Kendric.

"Hell take the understanding!" he blurted out savagely. "We stand even tonight, one as close to the loot as the other. It's every man for himself, whole hog or none, and the devil take the hindmost. That's what it is!"

"Good," snapped Kendric. "That suits me." He slammed his little pad of bank notes down on the table and took his chair. "What's the game, gentlemen?"

They named it poker and played hard. Reckless men with money were they all, men accustomed to big fast games. The most reckless of them, Jim Kendric, was in a mood for anything provided it raced. Betty's attitude, Betty's look, had stirred him after a strange new fashion which he did not analyze. Barlow's unreasonable unfriendliness hurt and angered; the jeer in Rios's hard black eyes ruffled his blood. And even young Bruce looked at him with a defiance which Kendric had no stomach for. From the first card played, Jim Kendric, like a pace maker in a race, stamped his spirit upon the struggle.

Betty, seeing that she was not to be allowed to go sat down and for a space made a pretense of ignoring what went forward before her. But presently as the atmosphere grew strained and intense, she forgot her pretense and leaned forward and watched eagerly. Zoraida had a couch drawn up for her, richly colored silken cushions placed to her taste, and stretched out luxuriously, her chin in her two hands.

There are isolated games wherein chance enters which make one wonder what is this thing named chance, and from which one rises at last touched by the superstition which holds so firm a place in the hearts of all gamblers. From the beginning it was Jim Kendric's game.

When a jack-pot was opened he went into it with an ace high, though it cost him a hundred dollars to call for cards, which was not playing poker but defying mathematics and challenging his luck. And the four cards given him by Bruce, whose blue eyes named him fool, were two more aces and two queens. And the pot that was close to ten hundred dollars before the sweetening was done, was his. Barlow, who had lost most, glared at him and muttered under his breath; young Bruce merely stared incredulously and looked again at the cards to make sure; Rios, who had kept clear, smiled and murmured:

"Lucky at cards, unlucky in love, señor."

"I prefer the cards, thanks," said Kendric, stacking his winnings. And there was enough of the boy left in him for him to look briefly for the first time at Betty. Zoraida saw and bit her lip.

But though it was borne in upon those who played and those who watched that it was Jim Kendric's game there were the inevitable tense moments when each man in turn had his own eager hope. Bruce, no cool hand at gambling, showed his excitement in his shining blue eyes; Barlow muttered to himself; Rios sat forward in his chair and left off pointing the tips of his mustaches. At the end of the first half hour, though Kendric's heap of winnings was by far the greatest, no man of them was down to bed rock.

And by now Kendric lost patience.

"Make it a jack pot for table stakes," he invited. "One hand for the whole thing!"

"What's the hurry?" demanded Bruce. "You're doing well enough as it is, aren't you?"

"A quick killing is better than slow torture," returned Jim lightly. "And you'll note that I am offering odds. Better than two to one against the flushest of you."

" Bueno, señor," said Rios. "It suits me."

"It's a fool thing to do," growled Barlow. A fool thing for Kendric, but not for him, since his were the biggest losses. He had always loved money, had Twisty Barlow, and could never