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Updated: June 27, 2025
And yet the sound of his voice, the sight of his face, would make instantly that spirit of hers his spirit to leap like a tigress in her defense. But where was Neale? The habits of life were all powerful; and all her habits had been formed under Durade's magnetic eye. Neale retreated and so did spirit, courage, hope. Love remained, despairing, yet unquenchable.
Durade, as a gambler, was a weakling in the grasp of a giant. "Come! ... Do you accept?" Durade's body leaped, as if an irresistible current had been shot into it. "Si, Senor!" he cried, with power and joy in his voice. In that moment, no doubt the greatest in his life of gambling, he unconsciously went back to the use of his mother tongue.
Some one in the canvas house was talking to Durade, who apparently must have been in Allie's room and at her window. "See hyar, Greaser, we ain't harborin' any of your outfit, an' we'll plug the fust gent we see," called a surly voice. Durade's staccato tones succeeded it. "Did you see them?" "We heerd them gettin' out the winder." Durade's voice rose high in Spanish curses.
Soon there arose in her ears the long-forgotten but now familiar sounds of a gambling-hell in full blast. The rolling rattle of the wheel, sharp, strident, and keen, intermingled with the strange rich false clink of gold. It needed only a few days and nights for Allie Lee to divine Durade's retrogression.
He had saved Allie Lee! Why had he given her up? He had stained his hands with blood for her sake. And that awful moment came back to him when, maddened by the sting of a bullet, he had gloried in the cracking of Durade's bones, in the ghastly terror and fear of death upon the Spaniard's face, in the feel of the knife- blade as he forced Durade to stab himself.
"An' prisintly I drhopped into that Durade's Palace. I had my drink, an' thin went into the big room where the moosic wuz. It shure wuz a palace. A lot of thim swells with frock- coats wuz there. B'gorra they ain't above buckin' the tiger. Some of thim I knew. That Misther Lee, wot wuz once a commissioner of the U. P., he wor there with a party of friends.
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.
In her extremity she had acquired a melancholy wisdom in the judgment of the faces of the men drifting through Durade's hall. What Allie had heard in this Englishman's voice she saw in his features. He did not look at her again. He played cards wearily, carelessly, indifferently, with his mind plainly on something else. "Ancliffe, how many cards?" called one of the black-garbed men.
Still, back in her consciousness there was a vague and growing thought. Sooner or later Neale would appear in the flesh, as he now came to her in her dreams. That night Allie, peeping out, saw by the fire and torch-light a multitude of men drawn to Durade's large tent. Mexicans, Negroes, Irishmen all kinds of men passed, loud and profane, careless and reckless, quarrelsome and loquacious.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Ancliffe. "Well, I'll block Durade's gang. Will you save the girl?" "Assuredly," answered the imperturbable Englishman. "Where shall I take her?" "Where CAN she be safe? The troop camp? No, too far, ... Aha! take her to Stanton. Tell Stanton the truth. Stanton will hide her. Then find Neale and King." Hough turned to Allie.
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