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Updated: June 27, 2025
He held this man by the throat with one hand and by the wrist with the other. Allie recognized Durade's Mexican ally. He gripped a knife and the blade was bloody. Once inside, where Ancliffe could move, he handled the Mexican with deliberate and remorseless ease. Allie saw him twist and break the arm which held the knife. Not that sight, but the eyes of the Mexican made Allie close her own.
He was a young giant with hulking shoulders, ruddy-faced, bold-eyed, ugly-mouthed. He reminded Allie of some one she had seen in California. He stared hard at her. "Hullo! Ain't you Durade's girl?" he asked, in gruff astonishment. Then Allie knew she had seen him out in the gold-fields. "No, I'm not," she replied. "A-huh! You look uncommon like her.... Anybody home round here?"
So far as Allie could see, Jones, the man in black, a pale, thin-lipped, cold-eyed gambler, was the only guest to win. Durade's manner was not pleasant while he paid over his debts. Durade always had been a poor loser. "Jones, you'll sit in to-morrow," said Durade. "Maybe," replied the other. "Why not? You're winner," retorted Durade, hot-headed in an instant.
"Don't faint ... Hear me. You remember we were curious about a girl Durade had in his place. This is she Allie Lee. She is innocent. Durade held her for revenge. He had loved then hated her mother ... Hough won all Durade's gold and then the girl ... But we had to fight ... Stanton, this Allie Lee is Neale's sweetheart ... He believes her dead ... You hide her bring Neale to her."
Tumble, blood-curdlin'! ... Neale held both Durade's hands an' wuz squeezin' thot knife-handle so the greaser couldn't let go. "Thin Neale drew out thot hand of Durade's the wan wot held the knife an' made Durade jab himself, low down! ... My Gawd! how thot jenteel Spaniard howled! I seen the blade go in an' come out red. Thin Slingerland tore thim apart, an' the greaser fell. He warn't killed.
My prayer is that some one will see this I'm writing and take it to you. Ancliffe brought your sweetheart, Allie Lee, to me to hide her from Durade. He told me to find you and then he died. He had been stabbed in saving her from Durade's gang. And Hough, too, was killed. Neale, I looked at Allie Lee, and then I understood your ruin. You fool! She was not dead, but alive.
In those gleaming hands, in the flying cards, in the whole intenseness of the gambler there showed the power and the intent to win. The crooked Durade had met his match, a match who toyed with him. If there were an element of chance in this short game it was that of the uncertainty of life, not of Durade's chance to win. He had no chance.
There were also Durade's other helpers Black, his swarthy doorkeeper, a pallid fellow called Dayss, who always glanced behind him, and Grist, a short, lame, bullet-headed, silent man all of them under the spell of the green cloth. With Durade's success had come the craze for bigger stakes, and these could only be played for with other gamblers.
Allie lost herself in the past, seeing the stream of mixed humanity that passed through Durade's gambling-halls. No doubt he was on his way, first to search for her mother, and secondly, to profit by the building of the railroad. But he would never find her mother. Allie was glad. At length she fell asleep and slept long, then dozed at intervals. The caravan halted.
In fear and trembling she listened with throbbing ears to footsteps and low voices, ceaseless, as of a passing army, and a strange, muffled roar, rising and swelling and dying. Durade's caravan had entered Benton in the dark. Allie had gotten an impression of wind and dust, lights and many noisy hurried men, and a crowded jumble of tents. She had lived in the back room of a canvas house.
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