There had always been a winsome something in the voice of the man. It was now commanding, irresistible. The loungers stood still and stared dumbfounded upon this terrible new version of an old legend.
Frenchy picked up four cards from his hand and held them up fanwise before his enforced listeners. “Look at ’em!” he shouted hoarsely. “Look at ’em! Let ’em burn through your hides into your souls! Oh, you don’t see anything, eh? Don’t one of you dare to grin!”
One hand fumbled nervously with the guns.
“What do you see? I say, what do you see? Four deuces? That all? I’ll tell you what I see. I see the red, warm hearts of two friends! I see diamonds that are cheap beside such hearts! I see a club—a black, brutal, treacherous club—that struck down a friend! And I see the devil’s spades that dug his grave! That’s what I see! Look hard!”
Frenchy seemed to exercise an uncanny influence over his hearers. Not one moved—all stared upon the four upheld deuces.
“It’s the devil’s story, gentlemen,” he continued in a low, husky voice. “It’s hung by me for three bloody years—it haunts me! I’ve got to tell it.”
He passed his free hand over his forehead beaded with sweat. Then he whispered a question to the spellbound audience:
“Did any of you know the Kid—Kid Smith?”
A momentary expression of infinite kindness softened the face of Frenchy, only to give way immediately to deep quivering lines of anguish. He continued tremulously.
“I knew him—the Kid. Had the biggest, bravest heart that ever beat in the God-forsaken white spaces of a map. One of that breed of fellows that the world nails to its crosses—the Kid was. And we were friends; that is, he was a friend. He gave and I took, and he was happier in the giving than I in the taking. That’s the way it always goes: one gives and one takes—and God pity the man that only takes!