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Barbee, staring strangely like one rudely awakened from sleep and not yet certain of his surroundings, let the bank-note go. His eyes, leaving it at last to rest steadily on Blenham, looked red and ugly. Packard slipped the wallet into his shirt. "Barbee," he said quietly, while he busied his eyes with Blenham's slightest movement, "this money was left to me by my father.
"You're a sweet picture of a dead game sport," he growled, shifting nervously in his chair. "I ain't got a gun; you an' Barbee have; go ahead an' call me all the names you like!" Steve counted the bank-notes in the wallet. Blenham had spoken truly; there were nine one-thousand-dollar bills. He put out his hand to Barbee for the tenth.
I should have looked him up, I suppose, before I fired Blenham. But, being made of flesh and blood " "I know, I know." And Royce filled his lungs with a big sigh. "Bein' a Packard, you didn't wait all year to get where you was goin'. But there'll be plenty of red tape that can't be cut through; that'll have to be all untangled an' untied.
There in the pitch dark, for no man to see the how of it, this is perhaps what had happened: There had been the old, long-rowelled Mexican spur hanging on the wall; Royce's shoulder or Blenham's had knocked it down; their feet had pushed it out to the middle of the floor. They had fallen, together, heavily; they had rolled. Blenham had gone over on his face, Royce's hands worrying him. The spur
Blenham answered him coolly. "I know when I've lost a trick, Steve Packard. This ain't the firs' one an' it ain't goin' to be the last. I've played 'em high an' I always knowed I took chances. But I'm playin' safe! Get me? Safe!" "Go ahead; what do you mean?" "Ol' man Packard is down there. This girl's yellin' spoiled my play. By now he has learned a thing or two.
Over his right eye was a patch; his face was still a sickly pallor; his one good eye burned with a sullen flame which never went out. Guy Little was the one human being in the world with whom the old man talked freely, to whom he unburdened himself. With his chief lieutenant Blenham he was, as with other men, short, crisp-worded, curt.
Blenham swung about on his heel, his eyes narrowing. "That you, Barbee?" he demanded sharply. "Sure it's me," rejoined Barbee with the same cool impudence. And to the man across the table from him, "Deal 'em up, Spots; you an' me is goin' to pry these two bum gamblers loose from their four-bit pieces real pronto by the good ol' road of high, low, jack, an' the game. Come ahead, Spots-ol'-Spotty."
"An'," continued Royce, his voice lowered a trifle, "an' what did you say about it, Stevie? I was to know " "Coach him up! Tell him what to say, why don't you?" jeered Blenham. "I don't think I need to," replied Royce quietly. "Do I, Steve?" "I was pretty much of a kid then, Bill," said Packard, a half-smile coming into his eyes for the first time, a smile oddly gentle.
The senior Packard's scowl had known fame as long as fifty years ago; never was it blacker than right now. For a little he stood still glaring at the floor. Blenham watched him covertly, a look of craft in the one good eye. "Better go over an' see Temple right away," said Packard presently. "He won't be able to pay up his next instalment. Tell him I'm goin' to foreclose an' drive him out.
"They're Big Bend cows," muttered Blenham. "The ol' man's orders " "Curse the old man's orders!" Steve's voice rang out angrily. "If he can't be decent to me, can't he at least let me alone? Need he send you here to do business with me?
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