The Girl’s lips parted to answer, then closed again dumbly,—­for it was then that she saw the boots, then the legs of the road agent slide uncertainly through the open trap, fumble clumsily for the rungs of the ladder, then slip and stumble as the weight of the following body came upon them while the weak fingers strained desperately for a hold.  The whole heart and soul and mind of the Girl seemed to be reaching out impotently to give her lover strength, to hurry him down fast enough to forestall a shot from the Sheriff.  It seemed hours until the road agent reached the bottom of the ladder, then lurched with unseeing eyes to a chair and, finally, fell forward limply, with his arms and head resting on the table.  Still dumb with dread, the Girl watched Rance slowly circle round the wounded man; it was not until the Sheriff returned his pistol to its holster that she breathed freely again.

“So, you dropped into The Polka to-night to play a little game of poker?  Funny how things change about in an hour or two!” Rance chuckled mirthlessly; it seemed to suit his sardonic humour to taunt his helpless rival.  “You think you can play poker,—­that’s your conviction, is it?  Well, you can play freeze-out as to your chances, Mr. Johnson of Sacramento.  Come, speak up,—­it’s shooting or the tree,—­which shall it be?”

Goaded beyond endurance by Rance’s taunting of the unconscious man, the Girl, fumbling in her bosom for her pistol, turned upon him in a sudden, cold fury: 

“You better stop that laughin’, Jack Rance, or I’ll send you to finish it in some place where things ain’t so funny.”

Something in the Girl’s altered tone so struck the Sheriff that he obeyed her.  He said nothing, but on his lips were the words, “By Heaven, the Girl means it!” and his eyes showed a smouldering admiration.

“He doesn’t hear you,—­he’s out of it.  But me—­me—­I hear you—­I ain’t out of it,” the Girl went on in compelling tones.  “You’re a gambler; he was, too; well, so am I.”  She crossed deliberately to the bureau, and laid her pistol away in the drawer, Rance meanwhile eyeing her with puzzled interest.  Returning, she went on, incisively as a whip lash:  “I live on chance money, drink money, card money, saloon money.  We’re gamblers,—­we’re all gamblers!” She paused, an odd expression coming over her face,—­an expression that baffled Rance’s power to read.  Presently she resumed:  “Now, you asked me to-night if my answer was final,—­well, here’s your chance.  I’ll play you the game,—­straight poker.  It’s two out o’ three for me.  Hatin’ the sight o’ you, it’s the nearest chance you’ll ever get for me.”

“Do you mean—­” began Rance, his hands resting on the table, his hawk-like glance burning into her very thoughts.

“Yes, with a wife in Noo Orleans all right,” she interrupted him feverishly.  “If you’re lucky,—­you’ll git ‘im an’ me.  But if you lose,—­this man settin’ between us is mine—­mine to do with as I please, an’ you shut up an’ lose like a gentleman.”