A six and a five! Eleven! Unbeatable except by a next-to-impossible Twelve.
Joel’s face set itself like wrinkled granite. He made no other outward sign of distress. Treve, at sound of the noisily rattling dice, had gotten interestedly to his feet, and stood with his head on a level with the deal table, watching.
Royce swept up the dice and tossed them into the cup; passing it across to Fenno. With hand as steady as a boy’s, the old man accepted the cup and sulkily he threw the two dice upon the board.
The jar of a heavy tread on the porch made both men turn their heads. Visitors at such an hour were unheard-of. Toni, the chief herdsman, stamped in to report the straying of a bunch of sheep that had nosed a hole in the rotting wattles of the home fold. Instinctively the partners glanced back to the dice.
There lay the little cubes, just under the candle’s nearest rays.
Two sixes! Twelve!
There had been fewer than nine chances in a hundred that Joel could have made such a throw. Yet, his proverbial hoodoo was broken. Luck, for once, seemed to have gravitated his way.
Fenno made no comment, but bent over to pat Treve with an odd new air of personal possession, while Mack listened scowlingly to Toni’s tale of the lost sheep.
“Suppose you and your dog chase out with Toni and round ’em up?” said Royce, at last, turning maliciously to his partner. “They’re not mine any longer, you know. Any more than Treve is. For once I’ll have the fun of going to bed and letting the rest of the outfit do the hustling. Good-night.”