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Golden Eagle cocked his ears, his head was turned towards Bad Man's Hollow. He needed no urging. He felt that he was going home. Together they rode away across the keg. Dr. Abbot had been up all night, as had most of Foss River. Everybody had been present at the fire. It was daylight when it was discovered that John Allandale and Jacky were missing.
A silence only broken by monosyllabic and almost whispered betting and "raising" as the games proceeded. An hour passed thus. At the table where Lablache and John Allandale were playing the usual luck prevailed. The money-lender seemed unable to do wrong, and at the other table Bunning-Ford was faring correspondingly badly.
Scranton's register was rising, while Allandale visitors began to feel something was on the verge of happening to crush the budding paean of victory that was ready to bubble from their lips. Nick evidently knew that he had shot his bolt. He, doubtless, tried frantically to encourage his legs to move faster, but they refused to hearken to the call.
"I'll tell them that with pleasure, Captain Morgan," replied the other, "and add a few remarks of my own about what I have seen of your hustling crowd over here. May the best nine win, and the contests leave no after bitter sting. If we can't get the prize, we'd be glad to see you fellows beat Allandale, because they'd be unbearable if they won two years running."
And somehow I've got a hunch that we're going to make even mighty Allandale take a tumble before the season gets old." "Don't boast too soon, Eli Griffin. That's a wee Yankee trick you must have inherited from your forebears." "Easy for you to say that, Andy McGuffey. Why, you're a regular old pessimist, like all your canny Scotch ancestors were.
But John Allandale at cards was the soul of honor. Lablache was confident in his superior manipulation not play of cards. He knew that, bar accidents, he must win. The mystery of being able to deal himself "three of a kind" and even better was no mystery to him.
Death death which ever way he turned. God! did ever a man suffer so? The name of John Allandale came to his mind and he gazed wildly about, fancying some one had whispered it to him in answer to his thoughts. He stood up. He took another step forward with reckless haste. He remembered the pistol behind him. The ground seemed to shake under him. His distorted fancy was playing tricks with him.
Jacky had not experienced, as might have been expected, very great difficulty in keeping her uncle fast to the grind-stone of duty. Whatever his faults and weaknesses, John Allandale was first of all a rancher, and when once the winter breaks every rancher must work ay, work like no negro slave ever worked.
Apparently, on the face of the returns, when half of the fifteen-mile course had been run, the victory was likely to be carried off by Whipple, the fleet-winged Allandale chap who had played right, field during the baseball matches; "Just" Smith; himself; or possibly Nick Lang. There was always a dim and remote possibility, however, of a dark horse forging to the front on the home stretch.
Allandale managed actually to tie the score in their half of the ninth, but Scranton still had an inning in which to do something. Thad Stevens led the batting list in the ninth; and some other heavy artillery followed close on his heels. Thad got first on a neat little hit. "Just" Smith advanced him a base with a sacrifice bunt.
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