Max Brand Read Online Free PDF Page A

glanced up sharply as though
reckoning his losses, though it seemed to Pierre le Rouge almost like
an appeal.
    And what appeal could affect Mac Hurley? There was no color in the
man, either body or soul. No emotion could show in those pale, small
eyes or change the color of the flabby cheeks. If his hands had been
cut off, he might have seemed some sodden victim of a drug habit, but
the hands saved him.
    They seemed to belong to another body—beautiful, swift, and strong,
and grafted by some foul mischance onto this rotten hulk. Very white
they were, and long, with a nervous uneasiness in every motion,
continually hovering around the cards with little touches which were
almost caresses.
    "It ain't a game," said the man who had first pointed out the group to
Pierre, "it's just a slaughter. Cochrane's too far gone to see
straight. Look at that deal now! A kid could see that he's crooking
the cards!"
    It was blackjack, and Hurley, as usual, was dealing. He dealt with one
hand, flipping the cards out with a snap of the wrist, the fingers
working rapidly over the pack. Now and then he glanced over to the
crowd, as if to enjoy their admiration of his skill. He was showing it
now, not so much by the deftness of his cheating as by the openness
with which he exposed his tricks.
    As the stranger remarked to Pierre, a child could have discovered that
the cards were being dealt at will from the top and the bottom of the
pack, but the gambler was enjoying himself by keeping his game just
open enough to be apparent to every other man in the room—just covert
enough to deceive the drink-misted brain of Cochrane. And the pale,
swinish eyes twinkled as they stared across the dull sorrow of the old
man. There was an ominous sound from Pierre: "Do you let a thing like
that happen in this country?" he asked fiercely.
    The other turned to him with a sneer.
    "
Let
it happen? Who'll stop him? Say, partner, you ain't meanin' to
say that you don't know who Hurley is?"
    "I don't need telling. I can see."
    "What you can't see means a lot more than what you can. I've been in
the same room when Hurley worked his gun once. It wasn't any killin',
but it was the prettiest bit of cheatin' I ever seen. But even if
Hurley wasn't enough, what about Carl Diaz?"
    He glared his triumph at Pierre, but the latter was too puzzled to
quail, and too stirred by the pale, gloomy face of Cochrane to turn
toward the other.
    "What of Diaz?"
    "Look here, boy. You're a kid, all right, but you ain't that young.
D'you mean to say that you ain't heard of Carlos Diaz?"
    It came back to Pierre then, for even into the snowbound seclusion of
the north country the shadow of the name of Diaz had gone. He could
not remember just what they were, but he seemed to recollect grim
tales through which that name figured.
    The other went on: "But if you ain't ever seen him before, look him
over now. They's some says he's faster on the draw than Bob McGurk,
but, of course, that's stretchin' him out a size too much. What's the
matter, kid; you've met McGurk?"
    "No, but I'm going to."
    "Might even be carried to him, eh—feet first?"
    Pierre turned and laid a hand on the shoulder of the other.
    "Don't talk like that," he said gently. "I don't like it."
    The other reached up to snatch the hand from his shoulder, but he
stayed his arm.
    He said after an uncomfortable moment of that silent staring: "Well,
partner, there ain't a hell of a lot to get sore over, is there? You
don't figure you're a mate for McGurk, do you?"
    He seemed oddly relieved when the eyes of Pierre moved away from him
and returned to the figure of Carlos Diaz. The Mexican was a perfect
model for a painting of a melodramatic villain. He had waxed and
twirled the end of his black mustache so that it thrust out a little
spur on either side of his long face. His habitual expression was a
scowl; his habitual position was with a cigarette in the fingers of
his left hand, and his right hand resting on his hip. He sat in a
chair