Ridgwell Cullum - The Trail of the Axe - A Story of Red Sand Valley

Harley-Smith laughed loudly.

"Say, bully for you," he cried sarcastically. "Young Jim ain't no gambler? Gee! I've see him take a thousand of the best bills out of the boys at 'craps' right there in my bar. Gambler? Well, I'd snigger!"

And he illustrated his remark loudly and long.

Dave had dropped out of the conversation at the mention of Jim Truscott's name. He felt that he had nothing to say. And he hoped to avoid being again brought into it. But Jenkins had purposely told him. Jenkins was a rigid churchman, and he knew that Dave was also a strong supporter of Parson Tom's. His wife had been very scandalized at the opening of a gambling house directly opposite their store, and he felt it incumbent upon him to fall in with her views. Therefore he turned again to Dave.

"Well, what about it, Dave?" he demanded. "What are you going to do?"

The lumberman looked him straight in the eye and smiled.

"Do? Why, what all you fellows seem to be scared to do. I'm going into this bazaar to do my duty by the church. I'm going to hand them all my spare dollars, and if there's any change coming, I'll take it in dry-goods."

But the lightness of his tone and smile had no inspiration from his mood. He was angry; he was disappointed. So this was the worth of Jim's promises! This was the man who, in a perfect fever of passion, had said that the old life of gambling and debauchery was finished for him. And yet he had probably left his (Dave's) office and gone straight to a night of heavy gaming, and, if Checks were right, running a faro bank. He knew only too well what that meant. No man who had graduated as a gambler in such a region as the Yukon was likely to run a faro bank straight.

Then a light seemed to flash through his brain, and of a sudden he realized something that fired the blood in his veins and set his pulses hammering feverishly. For the moment it set his thoughts chaotic; he could not realize anything quite clearly. One feeling thrilled him, one wild hope. Then, with stern self-repression, he took hold of himself. This was neither time nor place for such weakness, he told himself. He knew what it was. For the moment he had let himself get out of hand. He had for so long regarded Betty as belonging to Jim; he had for so long shut her from his own thoughts and only regarded her from an impersonal point of view, that it had never occurred to him, until that instant, that there was a possibility of her engagement to Jim ever falling through.

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