“Gentlemen,” said Hampton, gravely, his clear voice sounding like the sudden peal of a bell, “I can only thank you for your courtesy in this matter, and bid you all good-night.  However, before I go it may be of some interest for me to say that I have played my last game.”

Somebody laughed sarcastically, a harsh, hateful laugh.  The speaker whirled, took one step forward; there was the flash of an extended arm, a dull crunch, and Red Slavin went crashing backward against the wall.  As he gazed up, dazed and bewildered, from the floor, the lights glimmered along a blue-steel barrel.

“Not a move, you red brute,” and Hampton spurned him contemptuously with his heel.  “This is no variety show, and your laughter was in poor taste.  However, if you feel particularly hilarious to-night I ’ll give you another chance.  I said this was my last game; I’ll repeat it—­this was my last game!  Now, damn you! if you feel like it, laugh!”

He swept the circle of excited faces, his eyes glowing like two diamonds, his thin lips compressed into a single straight line.

“Mr. Slavin appears to have lost his previous sense of humor,” he remarked, calmly.  “I will now make my statement for the third time—­this was my last game.  Perhaps some of you gentlemen also may discover this to be amusing.”

[Illustration:  “Mr. Slavin appears to have lost his previous sense of humor,” he remarked, calmly.]

The heavy, strained breathing of the motionless crowd was his only answer, and a half smile of bitter contempt curled Hampton’s lips, as he swept over them a last defiant glance.

“Not quite so humorous as it seemed to be at first, I reckon,” he commented, dryly.  “Slavin,” and he prodded the red giant once more with his foot, “I’m going out; if you make any attempt to leave this room within the next five minutes I ’ll kill you in your tracks, as I would a mad dog.  You stacked cards twice to-night, but the last time I beat you fairly at your own game.”

He held aside the heavy curtains with his left hand and backed slowly out facing them, the deadly revolver shining ominously in the other.  Not a man moved:  Slavin glowered at him from the floor, an impotent curse upon his lips.  Then the red drapery fell.

While the shadows of the long night still hung over the valley, Naida, tossing restlessly upon her strange bed within the humble yellow house at the fork of the trails, was aroused to wakefulness by the pounding of a horse’s hoofs on the plank bridge spanning the creek.  She drew aside the curtain and looked out, shading her eyes to see clearer through the poor glass.  All she perceived was a somewhat deeper smudge when the rider swept rapidly past, horse and man a shapeless shadow.  Three hours later she awoke again, this time to the full glare of day, and to the remembrance that she was now facing a new life.  As she lay there thinking, her eyes troubled but tearless, far away on the sun-kissed uplands Hampton was spurring forward his horse, already beginning to exhibit signs of weariness.  Bent slightly over the saddle pommel, his eyes upon these snow-capped peaks still showing blurred and distant, he rode steadily on, the only moving object amid all that wide, desolate landscape.