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Updated: May 26, 2025
Pandemonium had begun in the other room, with Durade screaming for lights, and his men yelling and fighting for the gold, and Hough's friends struggling to get out. But they did not follow Hough into this room and evidently must have thought he had escaped through the other door. "Come," said Ancliffe, touching Allie. He helped her get out, and followed laboriously. Then he softly called to Hough.
Whereupon he became a seeker, a searcher; he believed there was not a tent or a hut or a store or a hall in the town that he had not visited. But he found no clue of Allie; he never encountered the well-remembered face of the bandit Fresno. He saw more than one Spaniard and many Mexicans, not one of whom could have been the gambler Durade.
Allie was young and hopeful. She kept whispering to her mother that the soldiers would come in time. "That brave fellow in buckskin he'll save us," said Allie. "Child, I feel I'll never see home again," finally whispered Mrs. Durade. "Mother!" "Allie, I must tell you I must!" cried Mrs. Durade, very low and fiercely. She clung to her daughter. "Tell me what?" whispered Allie.
With a beating heart Allie rose and pushed open the door. From that moment there never would be any more monotony for her nor peace nor safety. Yet she was glad, and faced the room bravely, for Neale or Larry might be there. Durade had furnished this larger place luxuriously, and evidently intended to use it for a private gambling-den, where he would bring picked gamesters.
A glorious and saving moment was coming a meeting that would be as terrible as sweet. Benton held her lover Neale and her friend Larry. They were searching for her. She felt their nearness. It was that which kept her alive. She knew the truth with her heart. And while she thrilled at the sound of every step, she also shuddered, for there was Durade with his desperadoes. Blood would be spilled.
His hope, spirit, luck, nerve were gone. The bottle and Benton had almost destroyed his skill at professional gambling. The days passed swiftly. Every afternoon Durade introduced a new company to his private den. Few ever came twice.
And if there was a fight, then that must be the end of Durade. For this gambler, Hough, with his unshakable nerve, his piercing eyes, his wonderful white hands, swift as light he would at the slightest provocation kill Durade. Suddenly Allie was arrested by a loud, long suspiration a heave of heavy breaths in the room of the gamblers.
In those four days Allie had recovered her bloom, her health, her strength everything except the wonderful assurance which had been hers. Durade had spoken daily with her, and had been kind, watchful, like a guardian. It was with a curious thrill that Allie gazed around as she rode into the construction camp horses and men and implements all following the line of Neale's work.
But notwithstanding all this, Durade was not Fresno, nor like any of those men whose eyes seemed to burn her. She returned to the wagon and to the several women and men attached to it, with the assurance that there were at least some good persons in that motley caravan crew. The women, naturally curious and sympathetic, questioned her in one way and another.
Her eyes were singularly large and dark, and violet in color. "It's a long, long way we are from home yet," sighed Mrs. Jones. "You call East home!" replied Mrs. Durade, bitterly. "For land's sake! Yes, I do," exclaimed the other. "If there was a home in that California, I never saw it. Tents and log cabins and mud-holes! Such places for a woman to live. Oh, I hated that California!
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