Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/53

Rh 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 at 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