The gambler's face grew serious. “What are you prodding for, Ned?” he asked.
The Auditor leaned forward on the table. “You are planning to slide out,” he said, “and it don't go.”
“Would it hurt you or Al?” asked the gambler anxiously.
The Auditor reached over and placed his hand on Hergan's arm. “It would not hurt me,” he continued, “and it would be no bones if it did, but it would hurt the boy, and he must not be hurt. Don't you know that the moment you are gone, Randal will sacrifice everything he possesses and pay up the deficit? And that would ruin him.”
The gambler's face lengthened. “I had not thought about that,” he said slowly, “but you are right, he would do that. He is that sort of a man. I have been a fool, an infernal fool, but I did not think about the boy getting hurt, not once.” The man shut his teeth tight together and the big muscles swelled out on his jaws.
The Auditor sat and watched the man across the table from him, and admired his iron nerve in the terrible struggle to decide between himself and the welfare of his friend. The man was evidently suffering. His face showed it plainly; the battle must be a bitter one. The Auditor wondered how it would result. He pitied the man, and in spite of all, half hoped that he would decide to save himself.
Presently the gambler turned slowly and lifted his face, white, haggard, ten years older than he had been an hour before.
“I don't see how to keep him from doing it,” he muttered; “I don't see how.”
The Auditor started. This man had not been thinking of himself at all.
“You see,” continued Hergan. “I am about fifty thousand short, and there is no way to raise that much money,—no way in God's world. If I slide over the Rio, Al will pay it to keep them from extraditing me; and if I stay here, he will pay it to keep them from sending me to the Pen. It's the devil's own trap, and works both ways.”