"Can't get him away!" repeated Joyce. "Where is he?"
"Oh, just up the street a little way," said Jack, carelessly, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.
Joyce looked at him steadily an instant, then, as if she had read his mind, said, with startling abruptness: "Jack Ware, you might as well tell me. Is he doing what Mr. Ellestad says all the boys out here do sooner or later, getting mixed up in some of those gambling games?"
There was no evading Joyce when she spoke in that tone. Jack had learned that long ago. But, with a glance toward Lloyd, who sat with her back toward them, he only nodded his reply. Startled by the question, Lloyd turned just in time to see the nod.
"I didn't intend to tell on him," blurted Jack, "but you surprised it out of me. He put some money on a roulette wheel, and lost all the first part of the afternoon. Now his luck has begun to change, and he says he's got to stick by it till he makes back at least a part of what he started with."
Joyce looked up at the clock. "We ought to be going," she said, drumming nervously on the arm of her chair with her fingers. Then she hesitated, a look of sisterly concern on her face. "I hate, though, to go off and leave him there. No telling when he'll come home if he feels he is free to stay as long as he pleases. Goodness, Jack! I'm glad it isn't you. I'd be having a fit if it were, and I can't help thinking how poor Elsie would feel if she knew it. Lloyd, what do you think we ought to do?"
"I think we ought to go straight off and leave him!" she answered, hotly. "It's perfectly horrid of him to so fah fo'get himself as a gentleman as to pay no attention to his promises. He made a positive engagement with us to meet us heah at foah o'clock, and now it's aftah five. I nevah had a boy treat me that way befoah, and I must say I haven't much use for one that will act so."
Presently, after some slight discussion, the girls slowly gathered up the bundles and walked up the street to the corral. Jack hurried on ahead, so that by the time they reached it, the men there had the ponies saddled and were waiting to help them mount and tie on the packages by the many leather thongs which fringed the saddles for that purpose.
It was a quiet ride homeward. A cloud seemed to have settled over their gay spirits. Nobody laughed, nobody spoke much. The story of Alaka was still fresh in each mind, and what Mrs. Lee had said about the curse of the West, and the fate of the men she had known who had become possessed by the same fever.
They remembered how Jo had come in at daylight, red-eyed and sullen, after his night's losses, for the lucky feeling which seized him at the sight of his cut fingers had been a mistaken omen of success. All that he had saved in months of service had vanished before sunrise in the same way that Alaka's turquoises and shells and eyes had gone.