if you got easygoing hosses you’re apt to be plumb tired before you hit Trainor to-morrow. But they’s another thing. Hugh”—here his voice lowered and grew gentry confidential—“you’d ought to get more’n one share of this stuff. Try to hang on. I’m going to see what can be done for you.”
The astonishment of Hugh Dawn was as great as though the ground had opened before his feet. He blinked. He tried to speak.
“You mean—” he began.
“I mean what I say,” said Jack Moon, smiling. “If you’re in doubt, just ask your daughter. I’ve told her everything. Now go back to your shack and go to sleep. Main reason being because you need rest, and I aim to get you on your way before sunup. No use letting the rest of the crowd know that you’ve slipped away. I may decide to tell ‘em that you’ve just given us the slip. But if you want to go now, start—and I’ll see that they ain’t a hand raised to stop you!”
Hugh Dawn hesitated, then nodded. The dominant tone of the outlaw overwhelmed him.
“You’re mostly always right,” he admitted, “though it sure strikes me dumb having you thinking on my side of things like this!”
The hand of Moon fell gently on the shoulder of his old follower.
“Partner,” he said, “I’ve been thinking on your side ever since I saw your girl. The father of a girl like that is all right!”
He had allowed his voice to swell as though in the stress of his honest emotion, and from the corner of his eye he studied the effect of his words upon the girl. He was amply rewarded by the shining of her eyes.
“I wanted to throw a scare into you, Hugh. I sure wanted to do that. But I never meant to do any more—after I seen you and the girl together at Cosslett’s the other night. Before that I figured you were no good, you see? Just a traitor to me and the crowd and your word of honor. Afterward I seen why you had to leave us, and I didn’t much blame you. With a daughter like that to take care of, you’d of been a no-good skunk to of stayed with me. Go back to your shack now, Hugh. Have a sleep. I’ll tend to all the rest!”
He struck him lightly and reassuringly on the shoulder as he spoke, and Hugh Dawn flushed with gratitude. After all, his was a hearty nature, and the reaction from his long suspicion of Moon was sudden and violent.
“Jack,” he said, in an uneven voice, “I been thinking a lot of hard thoughts about you. I been telling the girl she was a fool to believe you, but I see that you’re straight, after all. No matter what you’ve done to others, you’re playing a white game with me, and if a pinch ever comes later on when I can help you, lay to it that I’m your man!”
He shook hands strongly with Moon and turned away.
His daughter swung in beside him with tears bright in her eyes. “I told you,” she was saying. “He’s a good man at heart, dad, just as I said he was!”
“He’s been changed,” muttered her father, with great emotion, “and it’s you that’s done the changing; almost by his account you are, Jerry. And Heaven bless you for it. It’s the smile of your mother that you’ve got. Jerry. And that’s what’s saved me this time from a dog’s death!”
He had picked up his own gold and the share which Ronicky had given him, and under that great weight he walked with slow, short steps toward the shack in which he had spent the preceding night. From the door, where he deposited it, he and Geraldine looked back at the party around the camp fire.
It had been growing wilder and noisier during the past hour. The camp fire had been built up to a comfortable height, so that the heat of it carried even to the shack where the girl and her father stood. It threw, also, a terrible and living light on the faces of the band of Jack Moon where they sat in groups of four, playing cards. Three groups of four, and on the table before each player was a glittering little pile of yellow metal. Usually gambling was a silent and serious effort, but tonight, with raw gold for the stakes, they played like madmen, shouting and calling from table to table. Pounds of gold were wagered on a single hand, and the loser laughed at his losses. For they had seen a fortune taken out of mother earth that day, and, if this were gone, might there not be another horde some place, discoverable by such lucky fellows as those who followed that prince of leaders, Jack Moon? Such, at least, seemed to be their spirit as they played poker. The unshaven faces grew more and more animal-like as, from the distance, the firelight seemed redder and the shadows blacker than ever.
“They’re terrible men,” said the girl. “Ah, dad, what if Jack Moon should lose control of them!”
“Him?” The father chuckled confidently. “He’ll never lose control. Little you know Jack Moon, girl, if you think that any dozen men can get the upper hand of him!”
“But suppose some of them should lose a great deal and remember that you have money and—”
“Long as Moon is on our side, we’re safe as though we had a thousand. Stop worrying. Go to sleep—and trust in Jack Moon. Fear him when he’s agin’ you; but trust him like a rock when he’s behind you. No, sir, no dozen men can handle him. But if it come to a pinch—I dunno; yonder may be a man that’d give him a hard rub!”
“Where?”
“Close to that pine.”
He pointed again, and she made out the form of Ronicky Doone where he stood with his arms folded across his chest, looking on at the games.
“He doesn’t play,” she remarked.
“He’s smelling trouble,” said her father, “and that’s why he’s keeping his nerves steady. If him and the chief meet up, then’ll come the big noise and the big trouble, girl. You lay to that! One nacheral fighting man is worse’n a hundred common ones to handle!”
XX. BEATEN
As Hugh Dawn disappeared inside his shack, Jerry strolled slowly toward her own hut. She recalled the man who had brought her and her father safely from the house when Moon and his band stole toward it. She recalled the keen face of Ronicky when they worked over the puzzling record through which Cosslett had left trace of his buried treasure. Swift of hand, steady of eye, resourceful of brain—after all, her father might be right, and in the slender figure of Ronicky there might be locked sufficient power to match the big body and the strong brain of Jack Moon. What the eyes told her was simply an overwhelming contrast; what the memory told her equaled the scales to some extent. But how could her father speak of Ronicky and Moon as though they were antagonists, when Ronicky was now, it seemed, a member of Moon’s own band? Did he mean that the two might battle for supremacy inside the band?
She swerved directly so as to pass close to Ronicky Doone, and she noted that he paid not the slightest heed to her. At that, she paused. He had admired her before, she knew. Perhaps it might have been more than admiration, but now he looked past her into thin space.
“Ronicky!” she murmured, as she paused near him.
His glance turned upon her swiftly, and he nodded; but then his eyes traveled past her again and toward those groups of gamblers, flashing from face to face as though he found the twelve an intricate and dangerous study. Why was that? she wondered.
“I’ve
