“Show down!  Show down!” cried the others.  Triumphantly Benito laid five cards upon the table.  Four of them were kings.  A little cry of satisfaction arose, for sympathy was with the younger player.  McTurpin sat unmoved.  Then he threw an ace upon the table.  Followed it with a second.  Then a third.  And, amid wondering murmurs, a fourth.

He reached out his hand for the stakes.  Benito sat quite still.  The victorious light had gone out of his eyes, but not a muscle moved.  One might have thought him paralyzed or turned to stone by his misfortune.  McTurpin’s hand closed almost stealthily upon the paper.  There was a smile of cool and calculating satisfaction on his thin lips as he drew the stake toward him.

Then with an electrifying suddenness, Benito sprang upon him.  “Cheat!” he screamed.  “You fleeced me like a robber.  I knew.  I understood it when you looked at me like that.”

Quick as McTurpin was in parrying attack—­for he had frequent need of such defense—­the onslaught of Benito found him unprepared.  He went over backward, the young man’s fingers on his throat.  From the overturned table money rattled to the floor and rolled into distant corners.  Hastily the non-combatants sought a refuge from expected bullets.  But no pistol barked.  McTurpin’s strength far overmatched that of the other.  Instantly he was on his feet.  Benito’s second rush was countered by a blow upon the jaw.  The boy fell heavily.

McTurpin smoothed his ruffled plumage and picked up the scattered coins.  “Take the young idiot home,” he said across his shoulder, as he strode out.  “Pour a little whisky down his throat.  He isn’t hurt.”

CHAPTER III

THE GRINGO SHIPS

Government was but a name in Yerba Buena.  A gringo engineer named Fremont with a rabble of adventurers had overthrown the valiant Vallejo at Sonora and declared a California Republic.  He had spiked the cannon at the Presidio.  And now a gringo sloop-of-war was in the bay, some said with orders to reduce the port.  Almost simultaneously an English frigate came and there were rumors of a war between the Anglo-Saxon nations.

The prefect, Don Rafael Pinto, had already joined the fleeing Governor Castro.  Commandante Francisco Sanchez, having sent his soldiers to augment the Castro forces in the south, was without a garrison and had retired to his rancho.

Nevertheless, had the Senora Windham, with her son and daughter, called upon Sub-prefect Guerrero in hope of justice.  Her rancho was being taken from her.  Already McTurpin had pre-empted a portion of the grant and only the armed opposition of the Windham vaqueros prevented an entire dispossession.

Though Guerrero listened, courteous and punctilious, he had obviously no power to afford relief.  He was a curiously nervous man of polished manners whose eyelids twitched at intervals with a sort of slow St. Vitus’ dance.