began staking a bag at a time and cutting the cards, the higher
card winning. Kells won the first four cuts. How strangely that radiance
returned to his face! Then he lost and won, and won and lost. The other
bandits grouped around, only Jones and Braverman now manifesting any
eagerness. All were silent. There were suspense, strain, mystery in the
air. Gulden began to win consistently and Kells began to change. It
was a sad and strange sight to see this strong man's nerve and force
gradually deteriorate under a fickle fortune. The time came when half
the amount he had collected was in front of Gulden. The giant was
imperturbable. He might have been a huge animal, or destiny, or
something inhuman that knew the run of luck would be his. As he had
taken losses so he greeted gains--with absolute indifference. While
Kells's hands shook the giant's were steady and slow and sure. It must
have been hateful to Kells--this faculty of Gulden's to meet victory
identically as he met defeat. The test of a great gambler's nerve was
not in sustaining loss, but in remaining cool with victory. The fact
grew manifest that Gulden was a great gambler and Kells was not. The
giant had no emotion, no imagination. And Kells seemed all fire and
whirling hope and despair and rage. His vanity began to bleed to death.
This game was the deciding contest. The scornful and exultant looks of
his men proved how that game was going. Again and again Kells's unsteady
hand reached for one of the whisky bottles. Once with a low curse he
threw an empty bottle through the door.

"Hey, boss, ain't it about time--" began Jesse Smith. But whatever
he had intended to say, he thought better of, withholding it. Kells's
sudden look and movement were unmistakable.

The goddess of chance, as false as the bandit's vanity, played with him.
He brightened under a streak of winning. But just as his face began to
lose its haggard shade, to glow, the tide again turned against him.
He lost and lost, and with each bag of gold-dust went something of his
spirit. And when he was reduced to his original share he indeed showed
that yellow streak which Jesse Smith had attributed to him. The bandit's
effort to pull himself together, to be a man before that scornful gang,
was pitiful and futile. He might have been magnificent, confronted by
other issues, of peril or circumstance, but there he was craven. He was
a man who should never have gambled.

One after the other, in quick succ