o speaks with love's authority, "you
don't realize what you are doing. It is that cursed wine you have
drunk or there is just desperation in the air and it has got into you.
This hideous jest has gone far enough--too far. Tell them, tell
Kendric, that it was all a jest. Nothing more."

"Had you won," said Zoraida sweetly, "what then, Senor Bruce? Would
you have been jesting?"

Bruce's lips moved but no words came. Suddenly he whirled from her
upon Kendric, his face distorted with rage.

"Damn you!" he burst out.

No longer was it merely a case of murder in his look. The urge to kill
had swept into his heart, rushed hotly along his pounding arteries.
Before now had Kendric seen men frenzy-lashed, like Bruce, briefly
insane with the blood impulse and as Bruce cursed him he knew that he
meant to kill him. There were half a dozen paces between the two men
and already was Bruce's hand lost under the skirt of his coat. Kendric
sprang to his feet and as he did so Bruce whipped out his pistol.
There seemed no loss of time between the action and the discharge. But
Kendric had been quick and only his promptness saved the life in him
that night. As he went to his feet he swept up in his hand a heap of
the shining gold pieces and flung them straight into the boy's purpling
face. The bullet went by Kendric's head doing no harm beyond
splintering the wall behind him. Before Bruce could shake his head and
fire again Kendric was upon him, worrying him as a dog worries a cat.
Bruce, even in the desperation driving him, and with a gun in his hand,
was little more than a stripling in the hard hands at his wrist and
throat. A sudden heave and mighty jerk came close to breaking his arm
and freed the pistol from his claw-like fingers. Kendric hurled him
back so that Bruce staggered half across the room and crashed to the
floor. Before he could come to his feet the pistol had been dropped
into Kendric's coat pocket.

During the whole time Twisty Barlow had sat like a man bereft of
volition, his face puckered queerly, his mouth a little open. He
looked at the gold on the table top and at Zoraida; when Kendric had
hurled the coins into Bruce's face he looked at the gold rolling across
the floor and again back to Zoraida. Rios, having risen quietly, stood
with one hand on the back of his chair, one hand at his mustache,
looking steadily at his cousin. Even while Kendric and Bruce battled
Rios gave them scant attention. H