Down the Mother Lode Part 11

"Whoop-ee! Ki-yi-ee hick-ee! Yi-ee-ee!"

"There comes Curly," said Teddy Karns, "never altering the steady flow of the whiskey he was pouring into a tin cup for Sailor Jack to drink.

"Made a big strike, I hear."

"Yea-ah. About $25,000, they say. Might be a million, the way the female critters run," Ted laughed, as the hurdy-gurdy girls with shrieks of laughter pounced upon the noisy newcomer.

"Well, hel-lo, Nance, and Liz, and Babe, and Bouncin' Bet, old gal! All ready to help me sling it, ain't you? But where's little pale Alice?"

"Oh, Allie? She's back in the tents. Sick tonight. Awful bad, she's took. She'll be shufflin' off 'fore long, an' rid o' mortal misery."

"Poor little soldier!"

"Sweet, she was, an' born to be good. Why, I remember (we came 'round the Horn on the same sailin' vessel) that they wasn't a ailin' baby on board but what Allie could get a smile out of it, nor a sick soul that didn't bless 'er for 'er kindness an' care. Sick o' body, sick o' heart, Allie did for 'em all, bless 'er."

"She was happy, then," put in Babe.

"Yes. Comin' out to Californy to 'er lover, she were, all her folks back in the States bein' dead. She'd took care of 'er mother, last. 'Twas why 'er man came on ahead. An' when she got here--"

"Aw-w, Bet, don't you cry," said Babe. "Y' see, when we got here, Curly, we found her boy'd been shot in a fight over a mine. Allie, she hadn't no money left, and no gumption much, like Bet an' me, to fight her way, so we took 'er along o' us. We tried to keep her the little lady that she was, but--Well, we got snowed in last winter up on the divide an'--Faro Sam--Well, it broke her pure heart, an' most Bet's an' mine, too. An' she ain't never got over the cold she took, up there in the snow."

"Life's hard for a girl anyways you put it, an' she'll be happier over the river where there ain't no cold nor sorrer. Bet! Aw-w, she'll sleep on a finer bed nor you an' I could give 'er, an' wake happy, with ever'one she loved best around her. She's layin' there so white an'

small an' still it'd most break your hear to see 'er. Like a little snowdrop you've picked, an' worn, an' slung away. So gentle--"

"Well, what's this, anyway? A wake?" broke in Faro Sam's icy voice. "Do I hire fiddlers to play a funeral dirge? Get on with you," scattering the girls in the direction of the card tables and the dancing platform.

"Which ones do you want, Curly?"

"I want Babe and Betsy. Where's that little pale printer's devil, the one they call the gambler's ghost? I know Sam won't let you girls leave here."

"He's workin' up on the paper, I guess. They ran out of coal oil and had to fire up with pine knots."

"He's comin, now. He ain't no gambler's ghost tonight, though; he's pot black!"

"Ghost," said Curly, "you take this around to Allie." It was a $50 octagonal slug.

"Yessir."

"And you say that there's more, all she wants, where that comes from."

"Yessir."

Then, shaking his mop of brown, curly hair as though to relieve his head of a burden, he took the girls for what he felt was a much-needed round of drinks.

By midnight the place was wild!

"Sam," shouted Curly, "what's the limit on your pesky old game?"

"The ceiling's the limit."

"Well, I'll put up one bet! Bein' on Easy Street I was goin' back to the States to marry my girl, but I'm blamed if I don't put up my swag for one turn of the cards."

He sent for his "dust," and piled the long, buckskin bags criss-cross before Faro Sam's table.

"I'll copper the jack, gentlemen," he shouted. "All on the jack!"

Teddy Karn's face turned a pasty hue, and the tip of his tongue slid along his puffed lips, but the lines of Faro Sam's face never changed, and his eyes retained the blank impa.s.sivity of a snake's as he slipped his cards. There was a sudden, tense silence. The girls pressed forward with hurried breathing and the men waited, rigid as stones.

Somebody's mongrel paced to the middle of the platform and scratched for fleas, with soft thumping on the floor. That was all.

Suddenly a man swore! A woman's voice shrilled hysterically! Faro Sam rose to his feet ceremoniously. "The house is yours."

"By Jinks!" yelled Curly, "I've coppered the jack! I've broken the bank!

I've--"

One of the doors swung open quietly. Silence dropped once more, with the speed of tropical night, upon the blare of the place.

The gambler's ghost stood there silhouetted against the light from a log fire outside. There were pink streaks down his dirty face, washed by tears, and his young shoulders drooped woefully. The dog came forward and licked his twitching fingers.

"Allie is dead," he whispered.

"Curly, I should like to apply for the position of dealer over at your place, which yesterday was my place," said Faro Sam, next day at noon, meeting Curly on the street.

"Sure, you can have it, Sam. Too bad it's the custom for the house to go, too, when somebody breaks the bank. I've turned it over to George Spellman, with a thousand to start with. He and I come from the same place back in the States. Great friends we were, till we both got to sparkin' the same girl. When she took me, George, he got pretty ornery, but I guess he's all over it by this time. I'm goin' home to marry her, now.

"I've just been around to the tents seein' about little Allie's funeral, an' he'll keep on the girls, too. I'm pullin' my freight for Hangtown (Placerville). This town's a little too small for a fellow of my means."

Faro Sam looked after him with a cynical light in his narrow eyes.

"The pot bubbles loudest when the water's nearest the bottom," he muttered, and turned to pick a fastidious way through the mud.

Life that night in the gambling h.e.l.l went on much as usual. Teddy Karns "poured the rye," and Faro Sam "slipped the cards," whilst Babe worried over Bouncing Bet's intoxicated condition.

"It's Allie, you know," Babe confided to Red s.h.i.+rt Pete at midnight.

"She took it awful hard, and Spellman, the new boss, wouldn't let 'er off tonight. I bin tellin' 'er Allie's better off, but she won't listen to n.o.body. She's just bin pourin' 'em down all evenin'. What's that?"

at a loud banging on the doors. Some one opened them and Curly rode into the place on the handsome horse he had bought that morning.

"Well, boys, I'm cleaned! Tried to copper the jack in Hangtown and the whole $50,000 went. George, I'll be askin' for this place back, I guess."

"This place belongs to me, Curly Gillmore."

"Who says so?"

"This old lady says so," covering him with his pistol.

Curly laughed, not too musically. "Well, boys, what am I bid for this horse? I need a grubstake."

"Play you for him," said Faro Sam, laconically.

"Done," said Curly. A moment later he laughed once more and swung down off the Spanish thoroughbred. "He's yours. Well, good-night, boys."