“I used to be quick to get over things that were based on hope that way,” he smiled, turning to her for a second and scarcely noting how she leaned forward to listen. “Just then I was all sheep. I had it planned out ten years ahead in that twenty minutes. When a man never has had anything to speculate in but dreams he’s terribly extravagant of them, you know. I was recklessly so.
“Well, I was going along with my head in the clouds, and I made a short cut to go in the back way of the biggest gambling-tent, where I thought Walker might be watching the games. Right there the machinery of my recollection jumps a space. Something hit me, and a volcano burst before my eyes.”
“Oh, I knew it! I knew it!” she cried, poignant anguish in her wailing voice. “I told that chief of police that; I told him that very thing!”
“Did you go to that brute?” he asked, clutching her almost roughly by the wrist.
“William Bentley and I,” she nodded. “The chief 193 wouldn’t help. He told us that you were in no danger in Comanche.”
“What else?” he asked.
“Go on with the story,” said she.
“Yes. I came back to semiconsciousness with that floating sensation which men had described to me, but which I never experienced before, and heard voices, and felt light on my closed eyes, which I hadn’t the power to open. But the first thing that I was conscious of, even before the voices and the light, was the smell of whisky-barrels.
“Nothing smells like a whisky-barrel. It’s neither whisky nor barrel, but whisky-barrel. Once you have smelled it you never forget. I used to pass a distillery warehouse on my way to school twice a day, and the smell of whisky-barrels was part of my early education; so I knew.
“From the noise of voices and the smell of the barrels I judged that I must be behind the stage of the variety-theater tent, where they kept the stock of whisky for the bar. In a little while I was able to pick up the identity of one of the voices. The other one–there were two of them near me–belonged to a man I didn’t know. You have heard us speak, when we were back in camp, of Hun Shanklin, the gambler?”