The door opened, and Phil Marvin and Slim Dugan came back, talking and laughing together.
“What d'you know about that?” Pollard exclaimed softly. “She guessed right. She always does! Oughta be a man, with a brain like she's got. Here we are again!”
He spun the coin; it winked, fell, a streak of light, and again Terry had won. He began to grow excited. On the next throw he lost. A moment later his little pile of winnings had disappeared. And now he had forgotten the face of Joe Pollard, forgotten the room, forgotten everything except the thick thumb that snapped the coin into the air. The cold, quiet passion of the gambler grew in him. He was losing steadily. Out of his wallet came in a steady stream the last of his winnings at Pedro's. And still he played. Suddenly the wallet squeezed flat between his fingers.
“Pollard,” he said regretfully, “I'm broke.”
The other waved away the idea.
“Break up a fine game like this because you're broke?” The cloudy agate eyes dwelt kindly on the face of Terry, and mysteriously as well. “That ain't nothing. Nothing between friends. You don't know the style of a man I am, Terry. Your word is as good as your money with me!”
“I've no security—”
“Don't talk security. Think I'm a moneylender? This is a game. Come on!”
Five minutes later Terry was three hundred behind. A mysterious providence seemed to send all the luck the way of the heavy, tanned thumb of Pollard.
“That's my limit,” he announced abruptly, rising.
“No, no!” Pollard spread out his big hand on the table. “You got the red hoss, son. You can bet to a thousand. He's worth that—to me!”
“I won't bet a cent on him,” said Terry firmly.
“Every damn cent I've won from you ag'in' the hoss, son. That's a lot of cash if you win. If you lose, you're just out that much hossflesh, and I'll give you a good enough cayuse to take El Sangre's place.”
“A dozen wouldn't take his place,” insisted Terry.
“That so?”
Pollard leaned back in his chair and put a hand behind his neck to support his head. It seemed to Terry that the big man made some odd motion with his hidden fingers. At any rate, the four men who lounged on the farther side of the room now rose and slowly drifted in different directions. Oregon Charlie wandered toward the door. Slim sauntered to the window behind the piano and stood idly looking out into the night. Phil Marvin began to examine a saddle hanging from a peg on one of the posts, and finally, chunky Marty Cardiff strolled to the kitchen door and appeared to study the hinges.
All these things were done casually, but Terry, his attention finally off the game, caught a meaning in them. Every exit was blocked for him. He was trapped at the will of Joe Pollard!
CHAPTER 25
Looking back, he could understand everything easily. The horse was the main objective of Pollard. He had won the money so as to tempt Terry to gamble with the value of the blood-bay. But by fair means or foul he intended to have El Sangre. And now, the moment his men were in place, a change came over Pollard. He straightened in the chair. A slight outthrust of his lower jaw made his face strangely brutal, conscienceless. And his cloudy agate eyes were unreadable.
“Look here, Terry,” he argued calmly, but Terry could see that the voice was raised so that it would undubitably reach the ears of the farthest of the four men. “I don't mind letting a gambling debt ride when a gent ain't got anything more to put up for covering his money. But when a gent has got more, I figure he'd ought to cover with it.”
Unreasoning anger swelled in the throat of Terry Hollis; the same blind passion which had surged in him before he started up at the Cornish table and revealed himself to the sheriff. And the similarity was what sobered him. It was the hunger to battle, to kill. And it seemed to him that Black Jack had stepped out of the old picture and now stood behind him, tempting him to strike.
Another covert signal from Pollard. Every one of the four turned toward him. The chances of Terry were diminished, nine out of ten, for each of those four, he shrewdly guessed, was a practiced gunman. Cold reason came to Terry's assistance.
“I told you when I was broke,” he said gently. “I told you that I was through. You told me to go on.”
“I figured you was kidding me,” said Pollard harshly. “I knew you still had El Sangre back. Son, I'm a kind sort of a man, I am. I got a name for it.”
In spite of himself a faint and cruel smile flickered at the corners of his mouth as he spoke. He became grave again.
“But they's some things I can't stand. They's some things that I hate worse'n I hate poison. I won't say what one of 'em is. I leave it to you. And I ask you to keep in the game. A thousand bucks ag'in' a boss. Ain't that more'n fair?”
He no longer took pains to disguise his voice. It was hard and heavy and rang into the ear of Terry. And the latter, feeling that his hour had come, looked deliberately around the room and took note of every guarded exit, the four men now openly on watch for any action on his part. Pollard himself sat erect, on the edge of his chair, and his right hand had disappeared beneath the table.
“Suppose I throw the coin this time?” he suggested.
“By God!” thundered Pollard, springing to his feet and throwing off the mask completely. “You damned skunk, are you accusin' me of crooking the throw of the coin?”
Terry waited for the least moment—waited in a dull wonder to find himself unafraid. But there was no fear in him. There was only a cold, methodical calculation of chances. He told himself, deliberately, that no matter how fast Pollard might be, he would prove the faster. He would kill Pollard. And he would undoubtedly kill one of the others. And they, beyond a shadow of a doubt, would kill him. He saw all this as in a picture.
