Loaded Dice

by Ellery H. Clark

Bill Hinckley, pallid, unshaven, tremulous with drink, his drooping lower lip destroying whatever intelligence of expression he might have had when sober, blinked across the table at Harrison, and with his tattered coat sleeve wiped the maudlin tears from his staring, bloodshot eyes.

"I'm damn much obliged, Jack," he quavered, "you're good frien' to me always, an' I'll never forget it, never. I thought I was down 'n out for good, 'n would have been, too, 'f 'twan't for you. You're good frien', Jack, an' I'll never forget it, never."

Harrison eyed him with some disgust. "Ah, cut out the thanks, Bill," he said good-naturedly. "This ain't charity; it's business. We need a watchman, an' if you've got sense enough to keep sober there ain't no reason why you can't hold down the job as well as the next man. It ain't my doings, anyway; it's Gordon's. He's puttin' up the stuff, an' he asks me if I've got any friend I think'll be partial to the job. That's how you come in. But you want to get out of this place pretty damn quick. You've got two days to sober off in, an' then it's up to you whether you make good on your job or not. So you want to make a break out of here right away now. Rum shops ain't healthy for you. Get the idea?"

He rose, and Hinckley obediently enough followed suit, although into his drink-sodden brain hardly a word of Harrison's explanation and caution had penetrated. He had a chance at a job, and Harrison had got it for him; those were the two ideas he had absorbed, and those only, and his last words to Harrison were a repetition of his old refrain, "You're good frien' to me, Jack, an' I'll never forget it, never."

The week which Gordon had proposed for the consideration of the question of the capital stock had become first two, and then three, without any definite agreement being reached. The old man stood firm. Ten thousand shares, par one hundred; that he had determined upon as the proper thing, and to move him one share or one dollar in either direction seemed apparently a task impossible of achievement. To Gordon, therefore, fell the lot of yielding gracefully, and while he did not at once abandon his position outright, he did take pains to make it clear both to Mason and to Harrison that any arrangement in reason would be satisfactory to him. Thus complete good feeling was restored among the three, each tacitly assuming that some kind of an understanding would be reached whenever Gordon was ready to say the word.

Certain much needed improvements, indeed, Gordon insisted upon having made at once; for the mine's sake, as he phrased it, and not for his own. Not the least of these was the appointment of Bill Hinckley as watchman, and in Hinckley's welfare Gordon from the first showed a most kindly interest. Not only did he fit him out with a suit of clothes, a cartridge belt and revolver, but further he did what he could to arouse the drunkard's self-respect, smoothing out occasional dissensions between Mason and Hinckley, and sometimes even, when bound towards the mine, taking Hinckley's lunch pail down to him, and stopping for a pipe and a friendly chat.

Small wonder that he soon numbered Hinckley, along with most of the rest of the township, among his devoted admirers. With high and low alike, indeed, throughout the county, Gordon, as time went on, had reinforced his first good impression, gained by force of arms, by showing equal aptitude for the gentler arts of peace. Alike in the town of Seneca, among the scattered mountain claims, and in Jim Mason's little cabin itself, he was soon a welcome visitor, honestly liked, respected and looked up to.

And all this time, for all his different activities, for all the seeming aimlessness of many of his expeditions and conversations, Gordon, far underneath the surface, was working ceaselessly, steadily, relentlessly, toward one desired end; with Jim Mason's cabin as the scene, and the members of Jim Mason's household as the involuntary actors, in the drama whose final act he was seeking to hasten to its end.

With honest, open-minded Jack Harrison he had been on the best terms from the first; with Jim Mason progress had been slower, but progress it had been, for all that. And while the old man's grunts and occasional dry chuckles meant to Gordon little in the way of cordiality or good-will, to Ethel Mason and to Harrison they were a source of constant wonderment, revealing, as they did, depths of good-humor in the crusty old man of which they had never even dreamed. With the girl herself Gordon found his wits kept busy in a spirited warfare of words, for apparently to Ethel Mason his every action was a subject for criticism, his every word an opening for a shaft of wit, barbed for the most part, too, with a sarcasm keen and fine; and yet, for all their contention, under the surface both felt a mutual—perhaps both alike would have paused, at a loss for the precise word—liking, regard, attraction, perchance even a word of deeper meaning still.

From the first, indeed, they had been thrown much in each other's company. Many a long ride Gordon had been forced to take over the winding, solitary mountain roads, and what more natural than that he should ask Ethel Mason to go with him as companion and guide. And then, on days when business did not intrude itself, what again more natural than the transition to rides and walks with pleasure and not business as their aim.