easer?"

Ramon Garcia had again approached the table. He stopped suddenly as
George's snarl came to him, and his white teeth showed for a quick
flash under his lifted lip. Then, his eyes smiling darkly, he came on
again, bending intimately over Ernestine's chair.

"They are dancing over there," he said softly. "Will you dance with
me, senorita?"

George merely looked at them sidewise. Ernestine glanced up sharply
and for a moment indecision stood easily readable in her eyes. Then
she shook her head.

"Not now," she said quietly. "Maybe after a while. I don't know.
Anyway not now."

"_Gracias_, senorita." He thanked her quite as though she had taken
his proffered arm. And turning away he went back to the game of dice
and his wine glass. Kootanie laughed.

"Better look out for him, Koot," grinned Blunt Rand. "Them kind carry
cold steel sharp on both edges. They get it between your shoulder
blades and then twist it. It's awful uncomfortable."

Rand had drunk his share of toasts to the eternal joy of the Marquettes
and the drinking had given to his tongue a wee bit of recklessness, to
his heart a little venom. Out of a clear sky, his words falling
crisply through the little silence, he demanded of no one in particular
and in all seeming innocence:

"What's happened to No-luck Drennen? I ain't seen him here of late."

Kootanie George turned his head slowly and stared at him. Rand was
fingering his cards, his eyes hastily busied with their corners.
George turned from him to Ernestine. She bit her lips and a spurt of
red leaped up into her cheeks. Her eyes met his a moment, steely and
hard. Then they went to Blunt Rand, as bright and hateful as twin
daggers.

The man upon Rand's right started to laugh. He altered his mind as
Kootanie George's eyes turned slowly upon him and changed the laugh to
a cough behind his hand. Nobody offered to answer the question; it was
accepted as one of those utterances put into the form of an
interrogation merely for rhetorical reasons and requiring no reply.
For it was common talk through the camps that No-luck Drennen had done
the impossible and gotten blood from a turnip; in other words that he
had drawn love out of the heart of Ernestine Dumont. And it was known
that the miracle had been a twin wonder in that Drennen had refused to
see and when he had at last seen had refused to accept. Ernestine's
love had been like Ernestine herself, reckless. And, yes,