Startled, he looked at the table and realized that he himself had been cheated, with coolness and effrontery. He had been stripped of more than six thousand dollars with the skill of a professional. His eyes lifted to Kettleman’s.
“You have been looking for trouble,” Kettleman said quietly. “I am offering it to you.”
The gambler was nervous. He touched his tongue to his lips and felt the sweat beading his forehead.
“You are looking for trouble,” Kettleman said. “Why?”
There was no one close by. “I am going to kill you,” the gambler said.
“If you wish to leave the game, we can divide the pot, and I will forget what you have said.”
It was there then — a way out. As a gambler he knew he should take it, but gambling was only a part of his business and he had his pride.
“I cannot. I have been paid.”
“There are other ways to make a living and you have chosen the wrong one. I am offering you your last chance. Get out.”
“I gave my word. I took their money.”
Kettleman had seemed almost negligent. “When you are ready, then.”
The gambler stepped back quickly, overturning bis chair. “If you say I cheat,” he said loudly, “you are a liar!” And he grasped his gun.
Everybody saw him grasp the gun, everybody saw him start to draw it, and then he started coughing and there was blood on his shirt, blood dribbling down his chin, and on his face the realization of death.
Kettleman leaned over him. He looked down at the gambler and knew this man was only a step away from the man he was himself. “I didn’t want to kill you,” he said. “Who hired you?”
“Your wife,” the gambler said. “And her father.”
Kettleman realized then that he had known something like this would happen. He started to rise but the gambler caught his wrist. “I must know. Who are you?”
Kettleman hesitated. For the first time since that night he spoke of it. “I was the kid at The Crossing.”
“God!” The gambler was excited. He started to rise, began to speak, and then he died.
Kettleman turned away. “I saw it, sir.” The speaker was a man powerful in the state government. “You had to do it.”
Seeing an acquaintance, Kettleman said, “I am sorry for this. Will you see that he is buried well? I will pay.”
At the estate in Virginia he wasted no time. He changed clothes, repacked his bags, and caught the ride with the peddler he knew would be coming through. He also knew it would be months before the peddler came that way again.
From a distant town he took a stage, and then a train.
By the time they discovered his absence, he would be safely in the hideout in New Mexico.
It was very cold. He sat up in his blankets and put fuel on the fire.
His thoughts returned to the girl on the train. She had been singularly self-possessed, with a quiet beauty not easily forgotten.
Thinking of her made him remember his own wife, and he was amazed at how gullible he had been. His life had not fitted him for living with people. As a predatory creature he had been successful, as a human being he was a failure. He had invited no friendships and offered none.
He had entered business as he had life, to fight with fang and claw. Cool, ruthless, intelligent, he subordinated everything to success, and confided in no one, prepared to protect himself at all times, and to attack, always attack.
He had moved swiftly but with the sharp attention of a chess player, leaving nothing to chance. Nor had he ever attacked twice in the same way. He had developed an information service of office boys, messengers, waiters, cleaning women. They listened and reported to him, and he used the information.
It was a time of gamblers, a period of financial manipulation when fortunes were made and lost overnight. Mining, railroads and shipping, land speculation and industry — he had a hand in them all, shifting positions quickly, negotiating behind the scenes, working eighteen to twenty hours a day for days on end.
There had been periods of vague disquiet when the yearning within him reached out toward the warmth of others, but he fought down the impulse, stifling it. Occasionally, with subordinates or strangers, he had done some sudden, impulsive kindness, and was always ashamed of the lapse.
Of his early years he had only vague recollections. The one real thing in those years had been Flint.
That he had been found beside the burned-out wagon train, he knew. There were vague recollections of a woman crying, and of a man and woman who bickered and drank constantly. She had been kind to him when sober, maudlin when drinking, and there were times when she forgot all about him and he went hungry.
When he was four he heard the shot that destroyed the only world he knew. He had gone into the next room, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, to find the woman sprawled on the floor. He had often seen her like that, but this time there was blood on her back and side. Then people had come and taken him away.
After that he lived two years on a dry farm where there was little to eat and a losing battle was fought against big cattlemen. One day the farmers, fighting their own brutal struggle to survive, abandoned him on the street of a town.
He was sitting there at daybreak, shivering with the long night’s chill, when a cold-eyed man in a buffalo coat rode into town, went past him, then turned back.
He remembered the cold, gray eyes, the unshaven jaw, and the questions the man asked. He had answered directly and simply, the only way he knew. The man had leaned down and lifted him to the saddle, and down the street in an all-night saloon and stage station, the man bought him a bowl of hot stew and crackers. He was sure he had never eaten anything that tasted so good. He had eaten, then fallen asleep.
When he awakened he was on the saddle in front of the man. They rode for several days, always by the least-traveled trails.
The man took him to a house in a city and left him there with a woman. The next morning, Flint was gone.
The woman was kind, and she took him to a school where he was admitted. He remained there for eight years.
The studies were hard. The other students complained often. But for the first time he slept in a decent bed and had regular meals. He dreaded the day when he might have to leave, and somehow he got the idea that if he failed as a student he would be taken out of school.
When he was ten he made two discoveries at the same time, the first was the library, and the second was that the teachers at the school were curious about him. He found that by reading in the library he could anticipate lessons and find background for the essays the teachers constantly demanded. In this way he discovered the wonderful world of books.
The other students came from wealthy or well-to-do homes, but his tuition came from a variety of Western towns. He was asked many probing questions, but replied to none of them.
During the long days of riding before they reached the house of the woman, Flint had taught him things that remained in his mind and, he now realized, had shaped his entire life.
“Never let them know how you feel or what you are thinking. If they know how you feel they know how to hurt you, and if they hurt you once, they will try again.”
“Don’t trust anybody, not even me. To trust is a weakness. It ain’t necessarily that folks are bad, but they are weak or afraid. Be strong. Be your own man. Go your own way, but whatever you do, don’t go cross-ways of other folks’ beliefs.”
“Keep your knowledge to yourself. Never offer information to anybody. Don’t let people realize how much you know, and above all, study men. All your life there will be men who will try to keep you from getting where you’re going, some out of hatred, some out of cussedness or inefficiency.”
When the day came that the headmaster sent for him he fought down his panic. The headmaster was a severe, cold New England man. “We will be sorry to lose you,” he said. “You have been an excellent student. As of now you have a better education than many of our business and political leaders. See that you use it.” The headmaster paused briefly. “You came to us under peculiar circumstances, recommended by people whom we respect. We know nothing of your family.”