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in the old smoking car, to weigh the balance against them from every angle, and to see failure on every side. But they had become gamblers with Fate; for one, it was his final opportunity, to take or disregard, with a faint glimmer of success at one end of the vista, with the wiping out of every hope at the other. They tried not to look at the gloomy side, but that was impossible. As the train ground its way up the circuitous grades, Houston felt that he was headed finally for the dissolution. But there was at least the consolation about it that within a short time the uncertainty of his life would be ended; the hopes either crushed forever, or realized, that-- "Ba'tiste!" They were in the snowsheds at Crestline, and Houston had pointed excitedly toward a window of the west-bound train, just pulling past them on the way down the slope. A woman was there, a woman who had turned her head sharply, but with not enough speed to prevent a sight of her by the French-Canadian who glanced quickly and gasped: "The Judas!" Houston leaped from his seat and ran to the vestibule of the car, but in vain. It was closed; already the other last coach of the other train was pulling past and gaining headway with the easier grade. Wondering, he returned to his seat beside his partner. "It was she, Ba'tiste," came with conviction. "I got a good look at her before she noticed me. Then, when I pointed--she turned her head away." "But Ba'teese, he see her." "She's going back. What do you suppose it can mean? Can she be--" "Ba'teese catch the nex' train to Tabernacle so soon as we have finish our business. Eet is for no good." "I wonder--" it was a hope, but a faint one--"if she could be coming back to make amends, Ba'tiste? That--that other thing seemed so unlike the person who had been so good to me, so apart from the side of her nature that I knew--" "She have a bad mouth," Ba'tiste repeated grimly. "She have a bad eye, she have a bad tongue. A woman with a bad tongue, she is a devil. You--you no see it, because she come to you with a smile, when every one else, he frown. You think she is the angel, yes, _oui_? But she come to Ba'teese different. She talk to you sof' and she try to turn you against your frien'. Yes. _Oui_? _Ne c'est pas_? Ba'teese see her with the selfish mouth. Peuff! He see her when she look to heem out from the corner of her eye--so. Ba'teese know. Ba'teese come back quick, to
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