deal of a boy.

So the high heels of Donnegan tapped across the floor of Lebrun's. A
murmur went before him whenever he appeared now, and a way opened for
him. At the roulette wheel he stopped, placed fifty on red, and watched
it double three times. George, at a signal from the master, raked in the
winnings. And Donnegan sat at a faro table and won again, and again rose
disconsolately and went on. For when men do not care how luck runs it
never fails to favor them. The devotees of fortune are the ones she
punishes.

In the meantime the whisper ran swiftly through The Corner.

"Donnegan is out hunting trouble."

About the good that is in men rumor often makes mistakes, but for evil
she has an infallible eye and at once sets all of her thousand tongues
wagging. Indeed, any man with half an eye could not fail to get the
meaning of his fixed glance, his hard set jaw, and the straightness of
his mouth. If he had been a ghost, men could not have avoided him more
sedulously, and the giant servant who stalked at his back. Not that The
Corner was peopled with cowards. The true Westerner avoids trouble, but
cornered, he will fight like a wildcat.

So people watched from the corner of their eyes as Donnegan passed.

He left Lebrun's. There was no competition. Luck blindly favored him,
and Donnegan wanted contest, excitement. He crossed to Milligan's. Rumor
was there before him. A whisper conveyed to a pair of mighty-limbed
cow-punchers that they were sitting at the table which Donnegan had
occupied the night before, and they wisely rose without further hint and
sought other chairs. Milligan, anxious-eyed, hurried to the orchestra,
and with a blast of sound they sought to cover up the entry of the
gunman.

As a matter of fact that blare of horns only served to announce him.
Something was about to happen; the eyes of men grew shadowy; the eyes of
women brightened. And then Donnegan appeared, with George behind him,
and crossed the floor straight to his table of the night before. Not
that he had forethought in going toward it, but he was moving
absent-mindedly.

Indeed, he had half forgotten that he was a public figure in The Corner,
and sitting sipping the cordial which big George brought him at once, he
let his glance rove swiftly around the room. The eye of more than one
brave man sank under that glance; the eye of more than one woman smiled
back at him; but where the survey of Donnegan halted was on the face of
Nelly L