Evening Star Newspaper, October 27, 1935, Page 90

8 Magazine Section en Paces by Two gentlemen with a single code — One woman with a double purpose by HAL BORLAND < & { Py At the end of the argument, the gambler lay dead at his feet oonlight THIS WEEK Hlustrations by E. F. Ward T STILL lacked ten minutes of nine when Clarita thrust her needle through the silk and laid it aside, to go and stand by the window. It was moonlight out- side, but she scarcely noticed. Harrison Street lay below her, loud with Leadville's nightly roar; but she scarcely noticed that, either. She was gripping the slender fingers of one hand tightly in the fingers of the other, and her heart was beating fast beneath her stays. She tugged at the window, finally lifted the sash. The bellow of a drunken miner echoed up from the street. out of the welter of sounds. The air was chill, and she shivered; but she stood there, looking off across the sprawling city. She couldn't see the place, but she knew that somewhere off there on the mountainside Chase Harrison and Mart Reade were stand- ing and talking, like gentlemen; hating each other like feudists, but talking like gentlemen. And she knew that after their few words they would walk together out into the open. in the full moonlight. stand with shoulder blades to shoulder blades, and then begin to walk, steadily, in even strides. Five steps each, so that they would be ten paces apart. Then they would turn, each quick as a cat, and guns would gleam in the moonlight, and fire would flash. Two shots - no: only one shot. One shot, and then — Clarita had met Mart Reade when she was but sixteen, and her Spanish mother nearly two years dead. Her Yankee father, already middle-aged when he married the beautiful Clara Mendoza and took her to St. Louis, had already declined into doddering dreams in his little gunshop, leaving Clarita to her own fancies. So Clarita met Mart Reade, a few years home from the war between the States and now a gentleman gambler, every inch a gambler, every inch a gentleman, by his own code; a handsome man, tall and thin and vain of his dress and quick of both eye and hand; with an easy smile but no laughter, a man who could and did chance life and every material possession on the turn of a card or the draw of a gun. When she met him, Clarita felt her heart flutter, knew that her dark eyes revealed the fluttering. And he, struck by this strange beauty of mixed blood, Yankee and Spanish, smiled that thin-lipped, mirthless smile and paid her first polite deference, then polite courtship, then made her his wife in all but name. Gay days, those, in the St. Louis of the early seventies, with a frontier in the door- yard, a growing civilization pressing on from behind; a town of trappers and traders and rivermen in buckskin and jeans and blanket cloth, and of merchants and speculators and gamblers in silk and broadcloth; of raw mil- lionaires from California and gaunt cattlemen from Texas and freighters from Santa Fe and Denver. Days of easy money for such gamblers as Mart Reade, with his suave manner, his deft fingers, his quick eyes, his taut steel nerves. And Clarita was happy. in silks and gems and October 27, 1935 luxury known only to millionaires’ wives and lucky gamblers’ favorites. So that in time she, too, became a gambler in everything save the literal chancing of literal wealth on the turn of a card. Tomorrow? What of tomorrow when today is so good? Life? What of life when fate governs all? Live and play the game, and laugh and enjoy the good things that fate brings your way. Thus she lived, and was happy, until Chase Harrison came. Chase Harrison, too, was a gambler, and Chase, too, had been an officer in General Lee’s army, even as Mart. Gentlemen both, who had known each other as boys, and then as striplings, and then as young men off to the war. Gentlemen who had come back from the war with that tight-lipped smile and that cynical faith in the turn of a card or the draw of a gun. These things Clarita learned, piecemeal, after her first meeting with Chase Harrison; these things and the fact that between these two men, reared to the same code, lay a rivalry of years. What it was — some honor in school, some disputed winning at cards, some fancy for a forgotten pretty face — she never learned; only that it was there, just beneath the gentlemanly surface. And she, of all the women in this world, must be the one to bring it fully into sight, like the flame in an ember on a hearth, long buried under calm white ash, suddenly blown to life by a sharp breath. Clarita met Chase Harrison at dinner one night, when he, sitting alone across the room, saw Mart and rose and came to bow in his courtly way and exchange greetings with an old acquaintance. Mart introduced them, and the moment she met his eyes, those blue, sad eyes, she knew it must happen. They were eyes that spoke without movement, and their first message to Clarita was, “I love you.” Deny it she might, but deep in her heart she knew that denial was vain. For this was no flutter of her heart like that when she had first seen Mart Reade; this was a throb. That one throb, and then he was go.ae, back to his table, back to his own world somewhere remote and yet so close that even when had gone his presence lingered. : She saw him but a few times in those. next weeks, but he was always with her; anid her life with Mart Reade was like a dream - life, through which she walked as in a haz, numbed to all reality save that which re- volved around Chase Harrison. Mart must have known, though at first h ¢ said nothing. Instead, he went earlier to hi S games and returned later, and oftener than . not he brought back gems, for her ears and her wrists and her fingers, and left them where she must find them when she should awaken. It was his gesture, the one gesture he knew. But it was not quite enough, and when he saw that it was not enough, he came back more often with his tongue thickened, his eyes bloodshot and, finally, abuse on his lips. Through this she lived with a smile in her