Again Brent laughed: "Yes, I'll quit gambling, and sober up, and live with you till--how does it go--till death us do part."

"Toss it!" The words of the girl came short, with a curious indrawing of the breath, and her fingers clutched at the edge of the table till the knuckles whitened. The men who were crowded about the wheel glanced toward the table at the sound, and standing in his chair Brent waved them to fall back. Then he told them of his bet--while the dancing girl sat with parted lips, her eyes fastened upon his face. The men at the wheel surged back to give room. The proposition caught their fancy.

Ace-In-The-Hole, prince of gamblers, was betting himself--with the odds against him! And every man and woman in the room knew that if he lost he would keep his word to the last letter.

Carefully measuring the distance, Brent balanced the sack in his hand, then with a slow movement of his arm, tossed it onto the table. It struck almost squarely in the center, covering Numbers 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, and 20. The croupier spun the wheel, and sent the ivory ball spinning on its way. The men who had been playing, and the men from the bar, crowded close, their eyes on the whirling wheel. Brent sat down in his chair, lighted a cigarette, and filled the two empty champagne gla.s.ses from the bottle. He glanced across at Kitty. She was leaning forward with her face buried in her arms. Her shoulders were heaving with quick, convulsive sobs. In Brent's heart rose sudden pity for this girl. What to him had been a mere prank, a caprice of the moment, was to her a thing of vital import. The black fox fur had fallen away from about her neck exposing a bare shoulder that gleamed white in the light of the swinging lamp. She looked little and helpless, and Brent felt a desire to take her in his arms and comfort her. He leaned toward her, half rose from his chair and then, at a sound from the table, he settled back.

"Number 13 wins," announced the croupier, and the room was suddenly filled with the voices of many men. The croupier scribbled a notation upon a piece of paper and together with the sack of dust laid it upon the table between Brent and the girl. A moment later she raised her head and stared, dry eyed into Brent's face.

"Here, little girl," he said gently. "Forgive me. I didn't know you really felt--that way. Here, this is all yours--take it. The bet paid six to one. The weigher will cash this slip at the bar."

With a swift motion of her hand the girl swept sack and slip to the floor. "Oh, I--I hope you _die_!" she cried hysterically, and gathering her wrap about her, she sped from the room.

CHAPTER V

LUCK TURNS

Before the advent of the tin-horns, who invaded the Yukon at the time of the big rush, a "limit" in a poker game was a thing unknown. "Table stakes" did not exist, nor did a man mention the amount he stood to lose when he sat in a game. When a player took his seat it was understood that he stood good for all he possessed of property, whatever or wherever it might be. If the play on any hand ran beyond his "pile" all he had to do was to announce the fact and the other players would either draw down to it, or if they wished to continue the play, the pot, including the amount of the "short" player's last bet was pushed aside until the last call was made, the "short" player only partic.i.p.ating in the portion of the pot so set aside. If, in the final show-down his hand was the highest he raked in this pot and the next high hand collected the subsequent bets.

Stud poker was the play most favored by Brent, and when he sat in a game the table soon became rimmed with spectators. Other games would break up that the players might look on, and they were generally rewarded by seeing plenty of action. It was Brent's custom to trail along for a dozen hands or more, simply calling moderate bets on good hands, or turning down his cards at the second or third card. Then, suddenly, he would shove out an enormous bet, preferably raising a pair when his own hand showed nothing. If this happened on the second or third card dealt it invariably gave the other players pause, for they knew that each succeeding bet would be higher than the first, and that if they stayed for the final call they would stand to lose heavily if not be actually wiped out. But they knew also that the bet was as apt to be made on nothing as on a good hand, and should they drop out they must pa.s.s up the opportunity to make a killing. Another whim of Brent's was always to expose his hole card after the play, a trick that aggravated his opponents as much as it amused the spectators.

The result was that many players had fallen into the habit of dropping out of a game when Ace-In-The-Hole sat in--not because they disliked him personally, but because, as they openly admitted, they were afraid of his play. Many of these spent hours watching his cards. Not a man among them but knew that he was as square as a die, but every man among them knew that his phenomenal luck must sometime desert him, and when that time came they intended to be in at the killing. For only Brent himself believed that his luck would hold--believed it was as much a part of himself as the color of his hair or his eyes.

Among those who refused to play was Johnny Claw, from whom Brent had won ten thousand dollars a month before on three successive hands--two cold bluffs, and a club in the hole with four clubs showing, against Claw's king in the hole with two kings showing. Unlike the others who had lost to him, Claw nursed a bitter and secret hatred for him, and he determined that when luck did turn he would profit to the limit of his pile.

Johnnie Claw was one of the few old timers whom men distrusted. He was a squaw-man who had trapped and traded in the country as far back as any man could remember. With the coming of more white men, and the establishment of saloons along the river, Claw had ceased his trapping, and had confined his trading to the illicit peddling of hooch, for the most part among the Indians of the interior, and to that uglier, but more profitable traffic that filled the brothels and the dance halls of the Yukon with painted women from the "outside." So Claw moved among his compeers as a man despised, yet accepted, because he was of the North, and of the civilization thereof a component part.

Brent's luck held until the night before Thanksgiving, then the inevitable happened--he began to lose. At the roulette wheel and the faro table he lost twenty-five thousand dollars, and later, in a game of stud, he dropped one hundred thousand more. The loss did not worry him any, he drank a little more than usual during the play, and his plunges came a little more frequently, but the cards were not falling his way, and when they did fall, he almost invariably ran them up against a stronger hand.

Rumor that the luck of Ace-In-The-Hole had changed at last spread rapidly through the camp, and late in the afternoon of Thanksgiving day, when the play was resumed, spectators crowded the table ten deep. Men estimated Brent's winnings at anywhere from one to five millions and there was an electric thrill in the air as the players settled themselves in their chairs and counted their stacks of chips. The game was limited to eight players, and Camillo Bill Waters arriving too late to be included, promptly bought the seat of a prospector named Troy, paying therefor twenty-thousand dollars in dust. "We're after yer hide,"

he grinned good-naturedly at Brent, "an' I'm backin' the hunch that we're a-goin' to hang it on the fence this day."

"Come and get it!" laughed Brent. "But I'll give you fair warning that I wear it tight and before you rip it off someone's going to get hurt."

Cards in hand he glanced at the tense faces around the board. "I've got a hunch that this game is going to make history on the Yukon," he smiled, "And it better be opened formally with a good stiff round of drinks." While they waited for the liquor his eye fell upon the face of Johnny Claw, who sat at the table, the second man from his right. "I thought you wouldn't sit in a game with me," he said, truculently.

"An' I wouldn't, neither, while yer luck was runnin'--but, it's different, now. Yer luck's busted--an' you'll be busted. An' I'm right here to git my money back, an' some of yourn along with it."

Brent laughed: "You won't be in the game an hour, Claw. I don't like you, and I don't like your business, and the best thing you can do is to cash in right now before the game starts."

A moment of tense silence followed Brent's words, for among the men of the Yukon, open insult must be wiped out in blood. But Claw made no move except to reach out and finger a stack of chips, while men shot sidewise glances into each other's faces. The stack of chips rattled upon the cloth under the play of his nervous fingers, and Kitty, who had taken her position directly behind Brent with a small slippered foot upon a rung of his chair, t.i.ttered. Claw took his cue from the sound and laughed loudly: "I'll play my cards, an' you play yourn, an' I'll do my cashin' in later," he answered. "An' here's the drinks, so le's liquor an' git to goin'." He downed his whiskey at a gulp, the bartender removed the empty gla.s.ses, and the big game was on.

The play ran rather cautiously at first, even more cautiously than usual. But there was an unwonted tenseness in the atmosphere. Each man had bought ten thousand dollars worth of chips, with the white chips at one hundred dollars, the reds at five hundred, and blues at a thousand--and each man knew that his stack was only a shoestring.

After five or six deals Camillo Bill, who sat directly across the table from Brent tossed in a red chip on his third card which was a queen.

Claw stayed, the next man folded, and Brent, who showed a seven and a nine-spot raised a thousand. The others dropped, and Camillo Bill saw the raise. Claw, whose exposed cards were a ten-spot and a jack, hesitated for a moment and tossed in a blue chip. Camillo Bill's next card was an ace, Claw paired his jack and Brent drew a six-spot. With a grin at Brent, Claw pushed in a blue chip, and without hesitation Brent dropped in four blue ones, raising Claw three thousand. Camillo Bill studied the cards, tilted his hole card and glanced at its corner, and raised Brent two thousand. Claw, also surveyed the cards:

"Yer holdin' a four-straight d.a.m.n high," he snarled at Brent, "but I've got mine--my pair of jacks has got anything you've got beat, an' Camillo hain't got no pair of queens or he'd of boosted yer other bet. I'd ort to raise, but I'll jest stay." And he dropped five blue chips into the pot. Camillo Bill paired his ace with the last card, Claw drew a deuce, and Brent a ten spot. Camillo Bill bet a white chip, Claw stared at Brent's cards for a few moments and merely called, and Brent laughed:

"Here's your white chip, Bill, and I'll just lift it ten thousand--I'm that much light in the pot for a minute."

Camillo Bill called after a moment's deliberation, and Claw sat staring at the pot. He had just two blue chips left before him. "I ain't got ten thousan'," he whined, "I figger I've got about five thousan' outside this here stack, an' if I call fer that an' lose I'm busted flat." His hand pushed the two blue chips toward the pot, hesitated, and was quickly withdrawn. "d.a.m.ned if I do!" he snarled, "My jacks-up ain't worth it--not agin luck like yourn." He turned over his hole card which was a deuce, and again Brent laughed and flipped his hole card over. It was the king of spades.

"I haven't got a d.a.m.ned thing, and I never did have. What have you got buried, Bill, another ace?"

Camillo Bill grinned and shook his head: "Nope, my down card's a king, too. All I got is them pair of aces. Where's yer guts, Claw?"

Claw glared at Brent as the latter bought a new stack of chips, scribbled an I.O.U. for ten thousand upon a sc.r.a.p of paper, and tossed it across to Camillo Bill. Then clutching his two chips he rose from the table: "You jest done that to git me!" he growled, "I ain't got no show in this game--if you can't beat me yerself you'll run me up agin a better hand till I'm busted, if you lose money doin' it!"

"You've got it doped right, Claw," said Brent, evenly. "I told you you wouldn't last an hour, and if you'd have listened to me you'd have been eight thousand better off. Your hour isn't up yet, we've got plenty of time to get the rest of it."

"You'll raise h.e.l.l gittin' the rest of it!" muttered the man, and as he walked toward the bar, Troy, who had sold his seat to Camillo Bill, slipped into the vacated chair.

The incident served to liven the game up, and thereafter red and blue chips outnumbered the white ones in nearly every pot.

There was no thought of stopping for supper, and when the game broke up long past midnight Brent had lost three hundred thousand dollars. He turned to Kitty, who had never left her post at the back of his chair: "Come on, girl, let's go find something to eat and some fuzzy water," he smiled. "They sure had my number, tonight, but I'll go after them tomorrow."

Brent ordered and drank three gla.s.ses of whiskey, while waiting for the meal to be served, and after it was over, the girl leaned back in her chair and studied him as she sipped her champagne.

"You're different than you were a year ago," she said.

Brent laughed: "Sure, I was a poor man, then----"

The girl straightened in her chair and interrupted him abruptly, "And you'll never amount to a _d.a.m.n_ until you're a poor man again!" she exclaimed, with such feeling that Brent stared at her in surprise.

"What! What do you mean?"

"I mean just what I said. A year ago you were _some man_. Folks say you're a mining engineer--educated in a college. What are you now?

You're a gam., that's what you are, and the hooch is putting its mark on you, too--and it's a shame."

"What in the world is the matter with you, Kitty?" The man stared at her in surprise, "The hooch don't hurt me any--and I only play for the fun of the game----"

"No you don't! You play because its got into your blood, and you can't help playing. And you'll keep on playing till you're busted and it'll be a good thing when you are! Your luck has changed now, and they'll get you."

"I'm still playing on their money," retorted Brent a little nettled at the girl's attack. "If they clean me out, all right. They'll only win the half million I took out of my two claims--the rest of it I took away from them. Anyway, whose business is it?" he asked sullenly.

"It ain't n.o.body's business, but yours. I--I wish to G.o.d it was mine.

Everybody knows the hooch is getting you--and that is just what they all say--it's a shame--but it's his own business. I'm the only one that could say anything to you, and I'm--I'm sorry I did."

"They're right--it's my business, and no one else's. If they think I'm so d.a.m.ned far gone let them come and get my pile--I'll still have the claims, and I'll go out and bring in another stake and go after them harder than ever!"

"No you won't--they'll get the claims, too. And you won't have the nerve, nor the muscles to go out and make another strike. When you once bust, you'll be a b.u.m--a has-been--_right_."

"I suppose," sneered Brent, thoroughly angry now: "that I should marry you and hit out for the claim so we could keep what's left in the family--and you'd be the family."

The girl laughed, a trifle hysterically: "No--I wouldn't marry you on a bet--now. I was foolish enough to think of it, once--but not now. I've done some thinking since that night you tossed that sack of dust on the board. If you married me and did go back to where you were--if you quit the cards and the hooch and got down to be what you ought to be--where would I stand? Who am I, and what am I? You would stick by your bargain--but you wouldn't want me. You could never go back outside--with _me_. And if you wouldn't quit the cards and the hooch, I wouldn't have _you_--not like you are now--flabby, and muddy-eyed, an' your breath so heavy with rot-gut you could light it with a match. No, that dream's busted and inside of a week you'll be busted, too." Setting down her gla.s.s the girl quitted the table abruptly, leaving Brent to finish the bottle of champagne alone, after which he sauntered down to Cuter Malone's "Klondike Palace" and made a night of it, drinking and dancing.