Jimmie Welsh threw his hand into the discard and grinned sheepishly.
“Yuh got me this time,” he said.
Billy Speaker, who held a full house, kings up, smiled pleasantly.
“I allow yuh’ll have to put yore gun in the next pot if you want to stick along,” he said. “An’ if yuh do I’ll win it off yuh and get away from here.”
“No,” said Jimmie regretfully, “if it was any other time I might resk it, but not now.”
Red Tarken, who had been shuffling the single greasy pack of cards, began to deal. In the game beside these three were two more sheepmen and another cattle-raiser.
The six sat in the shade of a huge bowlder that had broken off and rolled down the side of the red scoria butte. The game had been going on for hours, and captors and captives alike played with all the cowboys’ fervent love of gambling. Tarken, Speaker, and their companion 218 were free to move as they liked, but were on parole not to try to overpower their guardians.
Others of the eleven owners sat about in the shade of rocks, playing cards, or talking and doing their best to pass away the time. It was a strange gathering. Only one man remained sitting by himself with bent head and his hands bound behind him. This was Beef Bissell, the cattle-king, who had steadfastly refused to give his word to remain peaceable, and fumed his life away hour after hour with vain threats and recriminations.
At either end of the small inclosure that backed against the butte, two men with Winchesters in their hands bestrode motionless horses.
This perpetual guard, kept night and day, though invisible from all but one small point, was the only sign that there was anything but the kindliest relations among all the members of the party.