Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/84

70 "Miami, Arizona, by rail. Not far from Globe."

Stone whistled. Seventy dollars wasn't going to help very much on that trip.

"It was my fault," he said. "Though I couldn't have done anything else at the time."

"Castro would have staked us," said Healy. "I don't know how he'd feel about it now. But"

"Castro be damned!" said Lefty. "I'm lousy with money. I made five straight passes and let 'er ride. Wen they hall left the table as the ruction starts I'm four 'undred and heighty to the good, in silver an' markers. I've got it hall in gold, tied hup in my 'andkerchief, twenty-four gold cartwheels. To 'ell with Castro! This firm hain't bankrupt, not by a long shot!"

It seemed to Stone as if Healy's congratulations lacked something, but he was in no mood to criticise.

He was longing for a bed, stiffening from the fight, eager to get a chance to look at the paper that Lola had slipped to him. They got a room with a single and a double bed in it, but it was graying to dawn before they secured it and Lefty proposed breakfast. Stone lingered to wash up and opened the note. It was brief, in a writing that reminded him somehow of the hint of girlishness he had noticed in Lola's shoulders: