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Updated: May 18, 2025
"Run for your life!" he shouted. Blicky and Jesse Smith were trying to hold the lunging Kells. "Jim, you block the door," called Jesse. "Bate, you grab any loose guns an' knives.... Now, boss, rant an' be damned!" They released Kells and backed away, leaving him the room. Joan's limbs seemed unable to execute her will. "Joan! It's true," he exclaimed, with whistling breath. "Yes."
"An' I'm here to say thet I wouldn't hev a share of your nugget." "Nor me," spoke up Jesse Smith. "I pass, too," said Chick Williams. "Jim, if I was dyin' fer a drink I wouldn't stand fer thet deal," added Blicky, with a fine scorn. These men, and others who spoke or signified their refusal, attested to the living truth that there was honor even among robbers.
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."
"Reckon no one knows but who's right here," replied Blicky. "Red an' Gul are sleepin' off last night's luck," said Bate Wood. "Have any of you seen young Cleve?" Kells went on. His voice rang quick and sharp. No one spoke, and presently Kells cracked his fist into his open hand. "Come on. Get the gang together at Beard's.... Boys, the time we've been gambling on has come.
Silence, after the shots and yells, seemed weird, and the groping giant, trying to follow Pike, resembled a huge phantom. With one wrench he tore off a leg of the overturned table and brandished that. He swayed now, and there was a whistle where before there had been a roar. Pike fell over the body of Blicky and got up again.
"We've sure got Blicky done!" exclaimed Kells. There was something taunting about the leader's words. He did not care for the gold. It was the fight to win. It was his egotism. "Make this game faster an' bigger, will you?" retorted Blicky, who seemed inflamed. "Boss, a little luck makes you lofty," interposed Jesse Smith in dark disdain. "Pretty soon you'll show yellow clear to your gizzard!"
Kells was slow in assimilating the truth and his action corresponded with his mind. Slowly his hand moved toward his gun. He drew it, threw it aloft. And then all the terrible evil in the man flamed forth. But as he deliberately drew down on the preacher Blicky leaped forward and knocked up the gun. Flash and report followed; the discharge went into the roof.
"I know what I meant," continued Gulden. "And I'm going to keep this nugget." There was a moment's silence. It boded ill to the giant. "So he declares himself," said Blicky, hotly. "Boss, what you say goes." "Let him keep it," declared Kells, scornfully. "I'll win it from him and divide it with the gang." That was received with hoarse acclaims by all except Gulden. He glared sullenly.
"I only took it because you was out of your head.... An' listen, boss. There's a few of us left." That was Smith's expression of fidelity, and Kells received it with a pallid, grateful smile. "Bate, you an' Jim clean up this mess," went on Smith. "An', Blicky, come here an' help me with Pearce. We'll have to plant him." The stir begun by the men was broken by a sharp exclamation from Cleve.
Jesse Smith came stamping in, with a crowd elbowing their way behind him. Joan had a start of the old panic at sight of Gulden. For once the giant was not slow nor indifferent. His big eyes glared. He brought back to Joan the sickening sense of the brute strength of his massive presence. Some of his cronies were with him. For the rest, there were Blicky and Handy Oliver and Chick Williams.
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