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<h2>X</h2> Willie Silverknife sat in Tesno's room with eight slips of paper fanned out in his hands. Tesno lounged on the bed with his hands behind his head. Willie was doing the talking. "This d-dealer don't fool around with anything so easy as that odd-even arrangement. He can bring up any one he wants by shuffling the way you showed me. I watched him for d-days and wrote down the cards as they come up. I d-did it with a stub of pencil inside my c-coat p-pocket. I g-got all eight arrangements here." "And you figure to bust him." "I'll p-prove the g-game is crooked by dealing out the deck and calling every card—exact, not just odd or even. I figure to d-do it when the place is crowded." Willie tapped the papers into an even packet and buttoned them into a shirt pocket. Tesno regarded the ceiling in silence. "I wanted to ch-check with you," Willie said. "I want to be s-sure there's nothing wrong with the way I got this s-studied out." "It's a fine piece of studying. But hold off, Willie." "Wh-why? If I show up another c-crooked g-game in the Pink Lady, it ought to just about f-finish the p-place." "Hold off," Tesno said irritably. "The town is running pretty tame—compared to what it was." "T-tame? You sh-should s-see what I s-see. Last night—" "All right! But don't put on a show this time." Tesno swung his feet off the bed and sat up. "Go to Pinky quietly and tell him to get shed of that dealer. He probably doesn't know he's got a card mechanic there." "You know b-better than that!" Willie stood up and gripped the back of his chair. "That Pinky never does anything honest if he can do it crooked. That place is rotten as hell's swill b-bucket, and I should th-think you'd be glad to s-see it go b-bust!" Tesno got slowly to his feet and stretched. "I have no love for Pinky. But he owns only a small chunk of that place." Tesno threw an arm around Willie's shoulders and led him to the door. "For the time being, Willie, keep your eyes open and don't stir up trouble." Willie turned in the doorway with hurt written on his face. "I'll be d-damned if you don't sound exactly like M-Madrid!" Tesno laughed and closed the door. Turning to the washstand, he soberly regarded himself in the small square mirror above it. <hr class="tb" /> Nobody ever knew exactly what happened that night or exactly who was to blame. But it seemed clear that dynamiter Heinie Hinkleman got his fuses fouled up and also that the foreman of the shoring crew was lax about getting his men to safety. The heading crew got clear in plenty of time and warned the bench gang on the way out; but when Heinie came jogging along in his leisurely flat-footed way, half a dozen workers were still putting up shoring. Heinie told them for cripes sake the fuses were lit, and he herded them ahead of him toward the portal. The fuses were cut for six minutes, he said, which would have been more than enough time to get the hell out of there. But Heinie had miscalculated for the first and last time in his career, and the blast caught them before they had gone a dozen yards. Rock hurtled out of the heading like shot from a gigantic gun barrel. An egg-sized splinter caught Heinie in the back of the skull and buried itself in his brain. Two of the others were dead when the dust cleared enough for rescuers to get to them. The other four were carried out stunned and just a whisper away from suffocation. Dawn was flaring over the hills to the east when Ben Vickers reached the scene, wild-eyed and half dressed. Keef O'Hara, who said he had been over the mountain at the other portal, arrived a few minutes later. Together, they questioned the heading crew, who were scared and mad and eager to blame somebody. Heinie, one of them volunteered, had lost two months' pay at faro that afternoon, which might account for his mind not being on his work, even if he hadn't taken a few nips to console himself. This, along with the fact that O'Hara's breath would back off a polecat, was enough for Ben. When he had seen the injured men to the camp hospital and got the doctor's report, he summoned Tesno to his cabin and read the riot act. Except for some rump-blistering profanity, which got monotonous, Ben spoke in a flat, controlled manner—which was a bad sign. Tesno sat with his chair tipped back and listened. Briefly, Ben said that he had jumping-well expected Tesno to establish authority in Tunneltown and kick it into line, and Tesno had jumping-well expected to do that, too, judging by the way he had started out. But he had changed his mind and had left the clean-up to the town itself, which was nothing but a jumping booze camp, and what booze camp ever cleaned itself up? Nevertheless, Ben had kept hoping for the best until this morning. With three men dead and another probably dying, his patience had run out, and there jumping-well was going to be a change.... "Now hold on," Tesno said, when Ben showed signs of running out of wind. "You said you'd settle for regulation, and you're getting it. It's come slowly, but—" "Don't recite your list of half-butt improvements to me," Ben said. "I know it by heart—right down to that stuttering clown of a half-breed deputy, who has done his job a jumping lot better than you have, at that!" Ben poked the tabletop with a forefinger. "And as for what I said I'd settle for, I told you clearly that the gambling had to go—all of it." "Damn it, Ben, you blame the town too much. If that dynamiter hadn't lost his stake at faro, he probably would have dropped it to some bunkhouse sharp at poker." "I'm not going to argue about it," Ben said icily. "I want the gambling stopped. Altogether." "That will close at least a couple of the saloons." "That would break my heart," Ben said. "Now do I get it or not?" Tesno stood up and sauntered toward the door. Anger, guilt, a sense of injustice, rose in him and laid harsh words on his tongue, but he did not speak them. He needed time to calm down, to think things out. "You'll get it," he said through clenched teeth, "or you'll get my resignation." He put his back to Ben and trudged out of the cabin and through the camp toward the town road. Dave Coons stepped out of one of the bunkhouses and fell in beside him. "Johnny Favery just died," Coons said. Tesno closed his eyes briefly. "That's four," he said. "He was just a kid," Coons said. "Just here a few months from the old country. He had nineteen cents in his pocket." "Hell of a thing," Tesno said. "Can you tell me where the blame lies?" Coons said. "The men have a right to know. So it won't happen again." "Ask Ben." "Thought I might get a straight story from you. O'Hara wasn't at the west portal as he claimed, I know that. He was at the cookhouse trying to sober up on coffee." "No reason why he should be on hand for every blast," Tesno grumbled. "Vickers is, during the day shifts. If O'Hara had been there, he probably would have seen that Hinkleman had the fuses wrong. Even if he hadn't, he'd have got that shoring gang out of there earlier." "All right," Tesno said. "Blame O'Hara." "I do blame the town. If it weren't so handy and so wild, O'Hara wouldn't have been drunk and Hinkleman broke and upset." Tesno made no reply. They had walked a little way along the forested road, chilly and damply fragrant at this hour. "When are you going to do something about the town, Jack?" Coons said, and abruptly turned and headed back toward the camp. Tesno lingered over eggs and coffee at a restaurant counter, then he went to his room and stretched out on the bed. He wanted to be alone an hour or so; after that, he wanted to see Persia. Her company would dull the shock and ugliness of the accident, he told himself, and he would be able to think clearly. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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