Rance looked puzzled, staring at the spatter of red as though hypnotised.

"No, there's no scratch there," he contended, wiping off the blood with his handkerchief.

"Oh, yes, there is," insisted the Girl tremulously; "that is, there will be in the mornin'. You'll see in the mornin' that there'll be--" She stopped and stared in frozen terror at the sinister face of the Sheriff, who was coolly watching his handkerchief turn from white to red under the slow rain of blood from the loft above.

"Oho!" he emitted sardonically, stepping back and pointing his gun towards the loft. "So, he's up there!"

The Girl's fingers clutched his arm, dragging desperately.

"No, he isn't, Jack--no, he isn't!" she iterated in blind, mechanical denial.

With an abrupt movement, Rance flung her violently from him, made a grab at the suspended ladder and lowered it into position; then, deaf to the Girl's pleadings, harshly ordered Johnson to come down, meanwhile covering the source of the blood-drops with his gun.

"Oh, wait,--wait a minute!" begged the Girl helplessly. What would happen if he couldn't obey the summons? He had spent himself in his climb to safety. Perhaps he was unconscious, slowly bleeding to death!

But even as she tortured herself with fears, the boards above creaked as though a heavy body was dragging itself slowly across them. Johnson was evidently doing his best to reach the top of the ladder; but he did not move quickly enough to suit the Sheriff.

"Come down, or I'll--"

"Oh, just a minute, Jack, just a minute!" broke in the Girl frantically.

"Don't shoot!--Don't you see he's tryin' to--?"

"Come down here, Mr. Johnson!" reiterated the Sheriff, with a face inhuman as a fiend.

The Girl clenched her hands, heedless of the nails cutting into her palms: "Won't you wait a moment,--please, wait, Jack!"

"Wait? What for?" the Sheriff flung at her brutally, his finger twitching on the trigger.

The Girl's lips parted to answer, then closed again dumbly,--for it was then that she saw the boots, then the legs of the road agent slide uncertainly through the open trap, fumble clumsily for the rungs of the ladder, then slip and stumble as the weight of the following body came upon them while the weak fingers strained desperately for a hold. The whole heart and soul and mind of the Girl seemed to be reaching out impotently to give her lover strength, to hurry him down fast enough to forestall a shot from the Sheriff. It seemed hours until the road agent reached the bottom of the ladder, then lurched with unseeing eyes to a chair and, finally, fell forward limply, with his arms and head resting on the table. Still dumb with dread, the Girl watched Rance slowly circle round the wounded man; it was not until the Sheriff returned his pistol to its holster that she breathed freely again.

"So, you dropped into The Polka to-night to play a little game of poker?

Funny how things change about in an hour or two!" Rance chuckled mirthlessly; it seemed to suit his sardonic humour to taunt his helpless rival. "You think you can play poker,--that's your conviction, is it?

Well, you can play freeze-out as to your chances, Mr. Johnson of Sacramento. Come, speak up,--it's shooting or the tree,--which shall it be?"

Goaded beyond endurance by Rance's taunting of the unconscious man, the Girl, fumbling in her bosom for her pistol, turned upon him in a sudden, cold fury:

"You better stop that laughin', Jack Rance, or I'll send you to finish it in some place where things ain't so funny."

Something in the Girl's altered tone so struck the Sheriff that he obeyed her. He said nothing, but on his lips were the words, "By Heaven, the Girl means it!" and his eyes showed a smouldering admiration.

"He doesn't hear you,--he's out of it. But me--me--I hear you--I ain't out of it," the Girl went on in compelling tones. "You're a gambler; he was, too; well, so am I." She crossed deliberately to the bureau, and laid her pistol away in the drawer, Rance meanwhile eyeing her with puzzled interest. Returning, she went on, incisively as a whip lash: "I live on chance money, drink money, card money, saloon money. We're gamblers,--we're all gamblers!" She paused, an odd expression coming over her face,--an expression that baffled Rance's power to read.

Presently she resumed: "Now, you asked me to-night if my answer was final,--well, here's your chance. I'll play you the game,--straight poker. It's two out o' three for me. Hatin' the sight o' you, it's the nearest chance you'll ever get for me."

"Do you mean--" began Rance, his hands resting on the table, his hawk-like glance burning into her very thoughts.

"Yes, with a wife in Noo Orleans all right," she interrupted him feverishly. "If you're lucky,--you'll git 'im an' me. But if you lose,--this man settin' between us is mine--mine to do with as I please, an' you shut up an' lose like a gentleman."

"You must be crazy about him!" The words seemed wrung from the Sheriff against his will.

"That's my business!" came like a knife-cut from the Girl.

"Do you know you're talkin' to the Sheriff?"

"I'm talkin' to Jack Rance, the gambler," she amended evenly.

"You're right,--and he's just fool enough to take you up," returned Rance with sudden decision. He looked around him for a chair; there was one near the table, and the Girl handed it to him. With one hand he swung it into place before the table, while with the other he jerked off the table-cover, and flung it across the room. Johnson neither moved nor groaned, as the edge slid from beneath his nerveless arms.

"You and the cyards have got into my blood. I'll take you up," he said, seating himself.

"Your word," demanded the Girl, leaning over the table, but still standing.

"I can lose like a gentleman," returned Rance curtly; then, with a swift seizure of her hand, he continued tensely, in tones that made the Girl shrink and whiten, "I'm hungry for you, Min, and if I win, I'll take it out on you as long as I have breath."

A moment later, the Girl had freed her hand from his clasp, and was saying evenly, "Fix the lamp." And while the Sheriff was adjusting the wick that had begun to flare up smokily, she swiftly left the room, saying casually over her shoulder that she was going to fetch something from the closet.

"What you goin' to get?" he called after her suspiciously. The Girl made no reply. Rance made no movement to follow her, but instead drew a pack of cards from his pocket and began to shuffle them with practiced carelessness. But when a minute had pa.s.sed and the girl had not returned, he called once more, with growing impatience, to know what was keeping her.

"I'm jest gettin' the cards an' kind o' steadyin' my nerves," she answered somewhat queerly through the doorway. The next moment she had returned, quickly closing the closet door behind her, blew out her candle, and laying a pack of cards upon the table, said significantly:

"We'll use a fresh deck. There's a good deal depends on this, Jack." She seated herself opposite the Sheriff and so close to the unconscious form of the man she loved that from time to time her left arm brushed his shoulder.

Rance, without protest other than a shrug, took up his own deck of cards, wrapped them in a handkerchief, and stowed them away in his pocket. It was the Girl who spoke first:

"Are you ready?"

"Ready? Yes. I'm ready. Cut for deal."

With unfaltering fingers, the Girl cut. Of the man beside her, dead or dying, she must not, dared not think. For the moment she had become one incarnate purpose: to win, to win at any cost,--nothing else mattered.

Rance won the deal; and taking up the pack he asked, as he shuffled:

"A case of show-down?"

"Show-down."

"Cut!" once more peremptorily from Rance; and then, when she had cut, one question more: "Best two out of three?"

"Best two out of three." Swift, staccato sentences, like the rapid crossing of swords, the first preliminary interchange of strokes before the true duel begins.

Rance dealt the cards. Before either looked at them, he glanced across at the Girl and asked scornfully, perhaps enviously:

"What do you see in him?"

"What do you see in me?" she flashed back instantly, as she picked up her cards; and then: "What have you got?"

"King high," declared the gambler.

"King high here," echoed the Girl.