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Updated: May 13, 2025
"What tract have you selected, Dr. Slavens?" asked the clerk with the blank. Dr. Slavens drew from the pocket of his coat a crumpled yellow paper, unfolded it, and spread it on the shelf. "The northwest quarter of Section Six, Township Twelve, Range Thirty-three," he replied, his eyes on Hun Shanklin's figures. Jerry Boyle almost jumped at the first word.
Then if they should draw Number One, or even anything up to a hundred, they would sell out for what there was to be gained. With Dr. Warren Slavens it was quite different from the case of these purely adventurous speculators. Dr. Slavens had been late in getting a start. It was not a difficulty peculiar to him alone that the start always seemed a considerable distance ahead of him.
Slavens vowed solemnly that he would win that fee or take in his shingle which, of course, was a figurative shingle only at that time and Agnes pledged herself to stand by and help him do it as faithfully as if they were already in the future and bound to sustain each other's hands in the bitter and the sweet of life. "It would mean a better automobile," said he.
Slavens rolled it on the box beside him. It seemed a true and honest die, for it came up now an ace, now trey; now six, now deuce. He rolled it, rolled it, thinking of Hun Shanklin and Hun's long, loose-skinned hand. For a place of wiles, such as Comanche had been and doubtless was still, it was a very honest little die, indeed. What use would anybody have for it there? he wondered.
Slavens spoke sharply to the animal, bending to draw up the girth, the stirrup thrown across the saddle. "Now, you old scamp, I'll take this friskiness out of you in a minute," said he, giving the horse a slap under the belly as he reached to pull the stirrup down.
"You seem to be doin' the talkin'," returned Shanklin with a show of cold indifference, although Slavens saw that he watched every movement Boyle made, and more than once in those few seconds the doctor marked Hun's sinewy right arm twitch as if on the point of making some swift stroke. Boyle stopped while there was yet a rod between them, so hot with anger that his hands were trembling.
Some who felt sudden and sharp drains dropped out, but others took their places, eyes distended, cheeks flushed, money in hand. Dr. Slavens and his backer made their way to the front. Slavens noted that Shanklin was making an extraordinary spread of money, which he had beside his hand in a little valise.
That must have been the very spot of its location, with the divided wall of the tent back of him, through which he had disappeared on the night that Walker lost his money and Shanklin dropped his dice. Of course. That was the explanation. The little cube in Slavens' palm was one of Shanklin's honest dice, with which he tolled on the suckers. He had lost one of them in his precipitate retreat. Dr.
They were too thin to be very wicked; so it appeared, at least. Dr. Slavens stopped in the wide-spreading door of this place to watch the shifting life within. Near him sat a young Comanche Indian, his hair done up in two braids, which he wore over his shoulders in front.
Slavens ran on, following the lead of a fresh dream, which had its foundation on the sands of despair. When the drawing had passed the high numbers which he had set as his possible lowest, he felt like sneaking away, whipped, to hide his discouragement where there was no one to see.
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