“My funnybone,” chuckled the storekeeper. “And I have to laugh. Just about once in so often Joe seems to lose ev’ry mite of sense he was born with. He thinks he can beat the man that got the first patent out on stud poker.”
“Ah! I know Joe used to like cards. When he was East. But now——Is it as bad as you intimate, Judson?”
“Some worse, I’m free to say,” declared the old man. “Joe’s gone up against Colorado Brown’s dealer, Miguel, several times lately. They get up a round game of a few fellers—all friends. But Miguel is always playin’ for the house. He’s a wonder. ‘Last Card Mike’ they sometimes call him. He seems to be able to read clean through the backs of any pack o’ cards you put up to him. He’s a wizard—no mistake.”
“You mean that Joe is losing money in this game?” asked Hunt, with some apprehension.
“Me, I’d just as soon bet on flies with their shoes stuck in molasses as to play stud. Youbetcha!” returned Judson, with a chuckle.
Hunt separated from the storekeeper and walked slowly toward the Wild Rose. He passed Colorado’s place; then he turned back. It is a matter of much moment for one man to interfere in another’s private affairs, and no one realized this fact better than the Reverend Willett Ford Hunt. His office could not excuse any unasked advice or intervention in Hurley’s chosen course, no matter how much Hunt desired to restrain his friend.
He hesitated again when he faced the swinging doors. There was not much noise inside. This was not a Saturday night and the amusement places along Main Street were not crowded. Most of the Passonians who wasted their money in the several places of this character spent it all and spent it quick. The mid-week nights were lean for the dive keepers.
It was not lack of courage that restrained Mr. Hunt from preaching a general revival and a bitter war against the cohorts of the devil in this town. Merely, the time was not yet ripe. Sometimes he feared that it never would be ripe. Certainly he had not yet reached the heart of Canyon Pass. Since the first shack had been built here at the junction of the two forks, the enemy had been in power; and it was now well entrenched.
But to-night Hunt was impressed by the feeling that his friend needed him. Joe was slipping away from him. For some unexplained reason the very man who had brought him here to the Pass and coaxed the idea of a spiritual uplift of the place into germination, was backsliding.
The parson began to feel that he could not stand by and see this thing go on. He pushed through the flaps of the door. He had seldom entered this, or any of the other saloons, in the evening.