n off gambling, and you've
kept your pledge for near a year. Well, it's twenty years since I
gambled--twenty years. I gambled with these then." He shook the dice
in the box. "I gambled everything I had away--more than two thousand
dollars, more than two thousand dollars." He laughed a raw, mirthless
laugh. "Well, you're the greatest gambler in the West. So was I-in the
East. It pulverised me at last, when I'd nothing left--and drink, drink,
drink. I gave up both one night and came out West.

"I started doctoring here. I've got money, plenty of money--medicine,
mines, land got it for me. I've been lucky. Now you come to bluff
me--me! You don't know old Busby." He spat on the floor. "I'm not to be
bluffed. I know too much. Before they could lynch me I'd talk. But
to play you, the greatest gambler in the West, for two thousand
dollars--yes, I'd like the sting of it again. Twos, fours,
double-sixes--the gentleman's game!" He rattled the dice and threw them
with a flourish out on the table, his evil face lighting up. "Come! You
can't have something for nothing," he growled.

As he spoke, a change came over Rawley's face. It lost its cool
imperturbability, it grew paler, the veins on the fine forehead stood
out, a new, flaring light came into the eyes. The old gambler's spirit
was alive. But even as it rose, sweeping him into that area of fiery
abstraction where every nerve is strung to a fine tension, and the
surrounding world disappears, he saw the face of Diana Welldon, he
remembered her words to him not an hour before, and the issue of the
conflict, other considerations apart, was without doubt. But there was
her brother and his certain fate, if the two thousand dollars were not
paid in by midnight. He was desperate. It was in reality for Diana's
sake. He approached the table, and his old calm returned.

"I have no money to play with," he said quietly. With a gasp of
satisfaction, the old man fumbled in the inside of his coat and drew out
layers of ten, fifty, and hundred-dollar bills. It was lined with them.
He passed a pile over to Rawley--two thousand dollars. He placed a
similar pile before himself.

As Rawley laid his hand on the bills, the thought rushed through his
mind, "You have it--keep it!" but he put it away from him. With a
gentleman he might have done it, with this man before him, it was
impossible. He must take his chances; and it was the only chance in
which he had hope now, unless he appealed for huma