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Updated: June 27, 2025
Her glance was like the tip of a rapier, searching him through for some iota of seriousness under this banter. "Ah?" and Nelly Lebrun laughed. "Don't you see that I mean it?" "You can watch me from a distance, Mr. Donnegan." "May I say a bold thing?" "You have said several." "No one can really watch you from a distance."
One glance around was sufficient to teach him the meaning of the silence. The stage was set, and the way opened to Donnegan. Without a word, big George stole to one side. Straight to the middle of the dance floor went Jack Landis, red-faced, with long, heavy steps. He faced Donnegan. "You skunk!" shouted Landis. "I've come for you!" And he went for his gun. Donnegan, too, stirred.
There was an odd mixture of emotions in Donnegan; but he felt most nearly like the poor man from whose hand his daughter tugs back and looks wistfully, hopelessly, into the bright window at all the toys. What pain is there greater than the pain that comes to the poor man in such a time?
"You dog," he whispered. "Did you listen at the door when Nick was here?" "Me?" murmured George. "No, I just been thinking." And so it was that while Donnegan went down the hill with Lou Macon, carrying an empty-chambered revolver, George followed at a distance of a few paces, and he carried a loaded weapon unknown to Donnegan. It was the dull time of the day in The Corner.
George drew rein behind him and turned upon the crowd one broad, superior grin. As who should say: "I promised you lightning; now watch it strike!" If the crowd had been expectant before, it was now reduced to wire-drawn tenseness. "Are you the fellow who turned back my man?" asked Donnegan. His quiet voice fell coldly upon the soul of Andy. He strove to warm himself by an outbreak of temper.
Yet still she seemed unreal. There is a quality of the unearthly about a girl's beauty; it is, after all, only a gay moment between the formlessness of childhood and the hardness of middle age. This girl was pale, Donnegan saw, and yet she had color. She had the luster, say, of a white rose, and the same bloom. Lou, the old woman had called her, and Macon was her father's name.
So he went straight to the colonel, and when he came close he saw that the fat man was apparently in the grip of a chill. He had gathered a vast blanket about his shoulders and kept drawing it tighter; beneath his eyes, which looked down to the ground, there were violet shadows. "I've lost," said Donnegan through his teeth. "Lord Nick has been here?"
The invalid lifted his eyes, and Donnegan saw a terrible thing that the nerve of the fat man had been crushed. The folds of his face quivered as he answered huskily: "He has been here!" "And Landis is gone?" "No." "Not gone? Then " "Nick has gone to get a horse litter. He came up just to clear the way." "When he comes back he'll find me!"
The colonel accepted the insult without the quiver of an eyelid. Throughout he seemed to be looking expectantly beyond Donnegan. "My young friend," he said, "you have been very useful to me. But I must confess that you are no longer a tool equal to the task. I dismiss you. I thank you cordially for your efforts. They are worthless. You see that crowd gathering yonder?
She sent out two messages: one to the cook to send breakfast to her room, which she ate while she finished dressing with care; and the other to the gambling house, summoning one of the waiters. When he came, she gave him a note for Donnegan. The fellow flashed a glance at her as he took the envelope.
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