“—that I’ll always think of you the best I can,” completed the Girl with much feeling. “An’ I want you to do the same for me.”
Silently, inscrutably, the gambler dealt the ten cards, one by one. But as the Girl started to draw hers toward her, his long, thin fingers reached across once more and closed not ungently upon hand and cards.
“The last hand, Girl!” he reminded her. “And I’ve a feeling that I win,—that in one minute I’ll hold you in my arms.” And still covering her fingers with his own, he stole a glance at his cards.
“I win,” he announced, briefly, his eyes alone betraying the inward fever. He dropped the cards before her on the table. “Three kings,—and the last hand!”
Suddenly, as though some inward cord had snapped under the strain, the Girl collapsed. Limply she slid downward in her chair, one groping hand straying aimlessly to her forehead, then dropping of its own weight. “Quick, Jack,—I’m ill,—git me somethin’!” The voice trailed off to nothingness as the drooping eyelids closed.
In real consternation, the Sheriff sprang to his feet. In one sweeping glance his alert eye caught the whisky bottle upon the mantel. “All right, Girl, I’ll fix you in no time,” he said cheeringly over his shoulder. But where the deuce did she keep her tumblers? The next minute he was groping for them in the dark of the adjoining closet and softly cursing himself for his own slowness.
Instantaneously, the Girl came to life. The unturned cards upon the table vanished with one lightning movement; the Girl’s hand disappeared beneath her skirts, raised for the moment knee-high; then the same, swift reverse motion, and the cards were back in place, while the Girl’s eyes trembled shut again, to hide the light of triumph in them. A smile flickered on her lips as the Sheriff returned with the glass and bottle.
“Never mind,—I’m better now,” her lips shaped weakly.
The Sheriff set down the bottle, and put his arm around the Girl with a rough tenderness.
“Oh, you only fainted because you lost,” he told her.