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Fear of Durade and his gang recurred, but she believed that the time of her deliverance was close at hand. Possibly Durade, with some of his men, had been killed in the fight with Hough. Then she remembered having heard the Spaniard order Fresno and Mull to go round by the street. They must be on her trail at this very moment.
"How?" rang General Lodge's voice. "Gold, of course. Neale was a gambler. Probably he had a grudge against this Durade.... I need not meet Neale, it seems, I am somewhat overwrought. I wish to spare myself further excitement." "Lee listen!" returned General Lodge, violently. "Neale is a splendid young man the nerviest, best engineer I ever knew. I predicted great things for him.
A slim, sloe-eyed, pantherish-moving Mexican came in to execute the order. He wore a belt with a knife in it and looked like a brigand. When he had lighted the lamps he approached Durade and spoke in Spanish. Durade replied in the same tongue. Then the Mexican went out. One of the gamblers lost and arose from the table. "Gentlemen, may I go out for more money and return to the game?" he asked.
It was a regurgitation of the old tide of somber horror which had submerged her after the murder of her mother. She was working herself into a frenzied state when unexpectedly Durade came to her room. At first glance she hardly knew him.
"All I had all our gentlemen opponents had all YOU had ... I have won it all!" Durade's eyes seemed glued to that dully glistening heap. He could not even look up at the coldly passionate Hough. "All! All!" echoed Durade. Then Hough, like a striking hawk, bent toward the Spaniard. "Durade, have you anything more to bet?" Durade was the only man who moved.
"He would kill me for running away," she shuddered, paling. "But while I was with him, obedient I don't think he would have done me harm. I'm more afraid now than when I was his prisoner." "I'll take a bunch of soldiers and go after Durade," said Neale, grimly. "No. Don't do that. Let him alone. Just get me away safely, far out of his reach."
Durade shoved back the gold so fiercely that he upset the table, and its contents jangled on the floor. The spill and the crash of a scattered fortune released Durade's men from their motionless suspense. They began to pick up the coins. The Spaniard was halted by the gleam of a derringer in Hough's hand.
And not for me." "Aha!" breathed Neale, softly. "I wonder! ... Allie, how cheap, how little I felt awhile ago, when he talked to me. I never was so ashamed in my life. He called me.... But that's over.... You said Durade had you. Allie, that scares me to death." "It scares me, too," she replied. "For I'm in more danger hidden here than when he had me." "Oh no! How can that be?"
"But I brought you up took care of you helped educate you," protested Durade, with agitation. "You were my own child, I thought. I was always kind to you. I I loved the mother in the daughter." "Yes, I know.... But you were wicked." "If you won't tell me it must mean she's still alive," he replied, swiftly. "She's not dead; ... I'll find her.
But the leader of that caravan turned out to be Durade." "Durade!" echoed Neale, intensely. "Yes. He was traveling east. He treated me well, but threatened me. When we reached the construction camp, somewhere back there, he started his gambling-place. One night I escaped. I walked all that night all the next day. And I was about ready to drop when I found this camp. It was night again.
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