“It’s Allie, you know,” Babe confided to Red Shirt Pete at midnight.  “She took it awful hard, and Spellman, the new boss, wouldn’t let ’er off tonight.  I bin tellin’ ’er Allie’s better off, but she won’t listen to nobody.  She’s just bin pourin’ ’em down all evenin’.  What’s that?” at a loud banging on the doors.  Some one opened them and Curly rode into the place on the handsome horse he had bought that morning.

“Well, boys, I’m cleaned!  Tried to copper the jack in Hangtown and the whole $50,000 went.  George, I’ll be askin’ for this place back, I guess.”

“This place belongs to me, Curly Gillmore.”

“Who says so?”

’This old lady says so,” covering him with his pistol.

Curly laughed, not too musically.  “Well, boys, what am I bid for this horse?  I need a grubstake.”

“Play you for him,” said Faro Sam, laconically.

“Done,” said Curly.  A moment later he laughed once more and swung down off the Spanish thoroughbred.  “He’s yours.  Well, good-night, boys.”

No one answered.  He had, like Hadji the beggar, become in twenty-four hours again a drifter.

Babe sneaked out after him.  “Here, Curly,” she slipped her hand into her bosom and held out the octagonal slug.  “When Bet an’ I reached Allie last night she was holdin’ it in her little dead hand, an’ there was such a smile on her face!  You gave her that happy smile.  God bless you for it!  Now, you take this — "

But Curly turned away, blinking his eyes, and trying to swallow the lump in his throat.  Babe stood watching him through her tears as he tramped down the street, out of the town on the road to the south.

* * * * *

Two years later in a hall in Sonora, a man strolled in to the card tables.

“Why, hel-lo, Curly!”

Curly glanced up briefly.  “Hello, George.”

“Hear you’ve made another strike.”

“You can hear a lot that ain’t true.  This happens to be.”

“You know, I was telling — "

“Well, the sight of you don’t put me in the mood to be told much.”  There was an imperceptible shifting of the crowd around the table.  They were moving away from Spellman.

“I was telling my wife — "

“My girl, you mean!  It wasn’t enough to keep my business, you had to go home an’ marry my girl, too, didn’t you?”

“Curly, for the love of heaven — "

“Take your hand off my arm, Pete.  I’m going to kill this — -.  He’s not the kind of man I thought he was.”

Two shots crashed in the room!

Spellman wavered through the smoke haze, then dropped his pistol and fell slowly across the card table littered with shining cards and poker chips.  An overturned tallow-dip dropped in a pool of wine and rolled down against the dead man’s cheek, dabbling it with the color which would never return to it again.

* * * * *

“Bet, ain’t that Curly Gillmore that we knew three years ago at Coloma, when Allie died?”