Jimmy was not cultivated. He was a careless, frank and muscular English lad, but he was not altogether raw, because he knew London and Paris and had for some time enjoyed Stannard's society. His manufacturing relations in Lancashire thought him an extravagant fool, and perhaps had grounds for doing so, for since Jimmy had broken their firm control his prudence was not marked.
"I must brace up. Let's stop for a few minutes," he said and went to the window.
The room was on the second floor, and the window opening on top of the veranda, commanded the valley. Across the terrace in front of the hotel, dark pines rolled down to the river, and the water sparkled in the moon. On the other side a belt of mist floated about the mountain slope and dark rocks went up and melted in the snow. The broken white line ran far North and was lost in the distance. One smelt the sweet resinous scents the soft Chinook wind blew across the wilderness.
Jimmy's glance rested on the river and the vague blue-white field of ice from which the green flood sprang. Now the electric elevators had stopped, the angry current's measured throb rolled across the pines. But for this, all was very quiet, and the other windows opening on the veranda were blank. Jimmy remembered the hotel manager himself had some time since firmly put out the billiard-room lights, when Jimmy was about ten dollars up at pool. He had afterwards won a much larger sum at cards, but his luck had begun to turn.
By and by Stannard came out and jumped on the high top rail. The light from the window touched his face, and his profile, cutting against the dark, was good and firmly lined. His balance on the narrow rail was like a boy's.
"If you carried my weight, you wouldn't get up like that. Two hundred pounds wants some moving," Deering remarked with a noisy laugh.
"I've known you move about an icy slope pretty fast," said Stannard, and taking his hands from the rail, pulled out his watch. "Two o'clock!" he resumed and gave Jimmy a smile. "I rather think you ought to go to bed. You have not got Deering's steadiness and still are a few dollars up. To stop when your luck is good is a useful plan."
"My legs are steadier than my head," Deering rejoined. "When I played the ten-spot Jimmy saw my game. Cost me five dollars. I reckon I ought to go to bed!"
Jimmy frowned. He was persuaded he was sober, and although Stannard was a very good sort, sometimes his fatherly admonition jarred. Then he had won a good sum from Stannard and must not be shabby. The strange thing was he could not remember how much he had won.
"To stop as soon as my luck turns is not my plan," he said. "I feel I owe you a chance to get your own back."