"'I don't know nothing at all about that,' says I. 'I don't gamble myself, but I don't doubt your game's a square game enough, as things go. People say it is. I don't complain of the game; that's Rocky's business, if it's anybody's. It's my money that I'm talking about, whether it was a skin game that he lost it over or not. It's those greenbacks that Colonel Starr paid me that I'm here for.'
"Then he fairly laughed out. 'Why, you galoot,' says he, 'you talk like a tenderfoot, yet you've been around this Western country long enough to cut your eye-teeth. When did you ever hear of a professional gambler giving up the stakes after he'd won 'em?'
"'I don't know as I ever did,' says I; 'but if not, here's the place for it to begin to happen, right here and now. I tell you I've got to have that money. I tell you I'm tired. I've prospected in every range of mountains there is in three Territories to find that Last Lap Lode. I've been eight years sweating and starving and freezing and wrastling round. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I got my stake, and I've got to have it. I tell you again I'm tired. I won't go through it all again for nothing. I'm either going out of this room with my money in my pocket, or I'm going out of it feet first, with a hole in my head you could put your fist through. I don't threaten nobody, but I'll have my money or I'll die right here.'
"'You say you don't threaten,' says he suspiciously. 'Aint that what you're saying now—something darned like a bluff?'
"'No,' says I, 'it aint. I don't threaten,' and I turned my right hip round towards him where I had my pistol slung. 'I'll hold up my hands and you can take away this pistol if you like,' and I threw up both my arms over my head.
"'Put down your hands,' says he quietly, 'I don't want to take your pistol.' There were mirrors all round the room, and as I turned I caught sight of my face, and though I felt red-hot I could see I was as white as a sheet, and my eyes like coals of fire. Truth to tell, I was mad. 'Don't take things too hard,' says he, 'it'll come right. I know just how you feel. I've been busted myself more nor once. Look here, young man, I've rather taken a liking to you. I'm going to set you going again. I'll give you a thousand dollars out of my own pocket, and that'll start you, and all I'll ask is——'
"'You'll give h—l!' I burst out. 'I'm not a beggar! I don't want no man's charity. I want my money—six thousand two hundred and fifty dollars in greenbacks—neither more nor less. That's all.'"
Stephens paused. The vividness of his own recollections, excited by the recital of the incident, had flushed his face and quickened his breathing. His pipe had gone out, and he signalled to the boy for another coal to relight it. Manuelita sprang up, ran to the kitchen hearth, snatched a coal from it, and gave it to the boy to carry in.
Don Nepomuceno, keenly interested, leaned forward with his hands on his knees. "Yes," he said, "yes. Gambling makes much trouble. I know it, for I was a great gambler myself. There were four years that I gambled a great deal, when I was sowing my wild oats." He nodded with the sententiousness of a reformed character, who yet relished the reminiscence. "It's a bad thing, very bad. But young men will be young men. Now, there's my son Andrés, he gambled a great deal too much last winter. But, look you, I am keeping that young man now out in camp with the sheep herd, to see after the peons. The lambing season is just coming on, and they are going off up the Valle Grande, where there is much green grass. That is far away from the settlements; he can't get into much trouble up there, can he?" and the father chuckled with self-satisfaction over his ingenious little manœuvre. "But here, I am interrupting you, Don Estevan, and I want to hear the rest of your story. Please excuse me, and continue."
"Well," resumed Stephens, "the upshot of it was he saw I was in earnest. So I was. I expected to die right there. If he'd attempted to leave that room, I'd have jumped him, and then they'd have killed me. I didn't mind, I was so wound up. He turns to me, and says he, 'I believe I'm going to do a thing that I never did before, young man. I'm going to give you back that money that your partner lost of yours.' He went to a safe he had in the corner, unlocks it, takes out a roll of notes and brings 'em to the table. 'Jake,' he sung out to his man through the wall, 'you can put away that shot-gun, it aint needed.'