A silence followed, broken only by the rain monotonously falling on the roof, and occasionally through the broad adobe chimney, where it provoked a retaliating hiss and splutter from the dying embers of the hearth.  The Right Bower, with a sudden access of energy, drew the empty barrel before him, and taking a pack of well-worn cards from his pocket, began to make a “solitaire” upon the lid.  The others gazed at him with languid interest.

“Makin’ it for anythin’?” asked Mills.

The Right Bower nodded.

The Judge and Left Bower, who were partly lying in their respective bunks, sat up to get a better view of the game.  Union Mills slowly disengaged himself from the wall and leaned over the “solitaire” player.  The Right Bower turned the last card in a pause of almost thrilling suspense, and clapped it down on the lid with fateful emphasis.

“It went!” said the Judge in a voice of hushed respect.  “What did you make it for?” he almost whispered.

“To know if we’d make the break we talked about and vamose the ranch.  It’s the fifth time to-day,” continued the Right Bower in a voice of gloomy significance.  “And it went agin bad cards too.”

“I ain’t superstitious,” said the Judge, with awe and fatuity beaming from every line of his credulous face, “but it’s flyin’ in the face of Providence to go agin such signs as that.”

“Make it again, to see if the Old Man must go,” suggested the Left Bower.

The suggestion was received with favor, the three men gathering breathlessly around the player.  Again the fateful cards were shuffled deliberately, placed in their mysterious combination, with the same ominous result.  Yet everybody seemed to breathe more freely, as if relieved from some responsibility, the Judge accepting this manifest expression of Providence with resigned self-righteousness.

“Yes, gentlemen,” resumed the Left Bower, serenely, as if a calm legal decision had just been recorded, “we must not let any foolishness or sentiment get mixed up with this thing, but look at it like business men.  The only sensible move is to get up and get out of the camp.”

“And the Old Man?” queried the Judge.

“The Old Man—­hush! he’s coming.”

The doorway was darkened by a slight lissome shadow.  It was the absent partner, otherwise known as “the Old Man.”  Need it be added that he was a boy of nineteen, with a slight down just clothing his upper lip!

“The creek is up over the ford, and I had to ‘shin’ up a willow on the bank and swing myself across,” he said, with a quick, frank laugh; “but all the same, boys, it’s going to clear up in about an hour, you bet.  It’s breaking away over Bald Mountain, and there’s a sun flash on a bit of snow on Lone Peak.  Look! you can see it from here.  It’s for all the world like Noah’s dove just landed on Mount Ararat.  It’s a good omen.”

From sheer force of habit the men had momentarily brightened up at the Old Man’s entrance.  But the unblushing exhibition of degrading superstition shown in the last sentence recalled their just severity.  They exchanged meaning glances.  Union Mills uttered hopelessly to himself:  “Hell’s full of such omens.”