rivate, if you don't mind," urged Kendric.

Now Barlow looked at him sullenly.

"After what happened last night, Kendric," he said heavily, "you and me
have got no private business together. Am I the man to take a bullet
from another and then go chin with him?"

"You blame me for that?" Kendric was incredulous. Barlow snorted.
"Well," continued Kendric stiffly, "at least we've unfinished business
between us. You haven't forgotten what brought us down here, have you?"

"Treasure, you mean?" Barlow spat out the words defiantly. "Put the
name to it, man! Well, what of it?"

"The understanding was that we stand together. That we split what we
find fifty-fifty. Does that still go?"

Barlow pulled nervously at his forelock, his eyes wandering. For an
instant they were fixed on the smiling face of Zoraida. Then grown
dogged they came back to Kendric.

"Hell take the understanding!" he blurted out savagely. "We stand even
tonight, one as close to the loot as the other. It's every man for
himself, whole hog or none, and the devil take the hindmost. That's
what it is!"

"Good," snapped Kendric. "That suits me." He slammed his little pad
of bank notes down on the table and took his chair. "What's the game,
gentlemen?"

They named it poker and played hard. Reckless men with money were they
all, men accustomed to big fast games. The most reckless of them, Jim
Kendric, was in a mood for anything provided it raced. Betty's
attitude, Betty's look, had stirred him after a strange new fashion
which he did not analyze. Barlow's unreasonable unfriendliness hurt
and angered; the jeer in Rios's hard black eyes ruffled his blood. And
even young Bruce looked at him with a defiance which Kendric had no
stomach for. From the first card played, Jim Kendric, like a pace
maker in a race, stamped his spirit upon the struggle.

Betty, seeing that she was not to be allowed to go sat down and for a
space made a pretense of ignoring what went forward before her. But
presently as the atmosphere grew strained and intense, she forgot her
pretense and leaned forward and watched eagerly. Zoraida had a couch
drawn up for her, richly colored silken cushions placed to her taste,
and stretched out luxuriously, her chin in her two hands.

There are isolated games wherein chance enters which make one wonder
what is this thing named chance, and from which one rises at last
touched by the superstition which holds so firm a place